


Heaven & Alchemy

by BananaStrings



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Closeted Character, Divorce, Fatherhood, Friends to Lovers, Internal Conflict, M/M, Major Character Injury, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:02:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaStrings/pseuds/BananaStrings
Summary: I'm in love with the idea of you | in rushed reality | hard to face this deception | this human frailty-Siouxsie Sioux. "Heaven And Alchemy."Mantaray, UMC, 2007.
Relationships: Carl Grimes & Rick Grimes & Shane Walsh, Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I turned Hershel Greene into Hershel Grimes, Rick's father.

Rick wasn’t eating his fries fast enough. Usually, every Friday (“Burgers & Fries-day”) he’d tear into the fries’ basket, as soon as he’d turned the key off in the ignition. He only liked them hot, and God, did he like them hot. You couldn’t get a word out of him till they were gone to the last schnibbley end—not even a grunt of acknowledgment. 

Instead of three by blissful three, Shane watched him daintily dip one cooling, limp end at a time into the ketchup on top of his burger patty. He even stopped long enough to pass a napkin over, when Shane asked for one. If that wasn’t a cry for help, his partner didn’t know what was. He could ask. They were in their spot. 

“So, how’s it with Lori?”

Parking behind the roller rink was their standard lunch break on patrol. No one came back there to gawk or ask silly questions at the cruiser window. They could relax enough to ask each other the kind of questions they had nowhere else to ask. Rick was staring middle distance, not quite far enough to be watching the egrets pick their way along the shore of the drainage pond. Shane knew Rick had heard the question, and all he had to do now was wait the answer out.

There hadn’t been anything exciting in the first half of their shift that they needed to come down from. An early morning shower had slicked the roads, leading to a brand new Mustang skidding out into a mailbox – a custom, welded-copper, tractor mailbox – leading to a punch being thrown and a gun being flashed. They’d arrived to mediate a check being handed over in exchange for an apology about the gun, then drove off without a second thought. They were past the point in their careers where they spared a moment to complain about human nature anymore.

“She’s good.”

“Not what I meant.”

Shane turned away from his recalcitrant friend as movement, through his rolled down window, caught his eye. In the afternoon sunlight, plovers ran through the sparkling mud. He smiled at the ability of such short legs to move so quickly. At the sound of Rick’s fingers scraping along his stubble, Shane turned back and watched his lips - noticeable as they were, reddened and slightly swelled from the salty food - tense in his fair face.

Rick’s thoughts chased behind stark blue eyes. Shane was struck in these unguarded moments by how little his partner looked like a man who’d made sheriff at thirty. He looked more like a sheltered college professor. His neat, short hair sat flat against his head but for the spate of dark blond curls nestled along the top. A wide and thoughtful forehead led to his slim and serious brows. The long and lean face matched his long and lean body. Shane felt one side of his mouth curve up involuntarily. Geez, at least one of them looked like a cop.

Shane carried the sturdier jaw and a sturdy brow over watchful, brown eyes. Thick, black hair stayed in place only after fighting it back every morning. He had inherited that indomitable Black Irish look. The pièce de résistance, however, was the impact-flattened bridge of his nose. He did not look like the uniform to mess with.

Of course, the nose hadn’t come from a fight. He’d been pitching ball in high school, when he’d knocked a line drive down with his face. His dad hadn’t had medical insurance for him at the time, so his treatment had been a bag of frozen corn and an aspirin. He’d forgiven his father, as soon as the swelling went down and one glance in the mirror proved that tough was a good look on him.

“We didn’t have a great night.”

Rick kept his eyes averted, not sure he could face Shane in the midst of this particular discussion. He heard the creak of leather as Shane shifted in his seat. Before Rick had the chance to feel bad about making his friend uncomfortable, a hand reached into his lap to cup his fly and give him a friendly squeeze.

“Still not doing much _sharing your feelings_ , stuff like that?”

God bless the bluntness that was Shane Walsh. Rick felt the tendons of his thighs tighten pleasantly as the brief contact ended. He wished to God that he’d flinched, but he hadn’t. He didn’t think there was anywhere Shane could touch him that would make him flinch, because he trusted Shane. And in light of that, he saw his mistrust of his wife.

“It’s just, uh, lately whenever I try…”

Whenever he tried to touch Lori even for the simplest pat on the shoulder, he flinched. Whenever she reached for him, he tensed into a block of concrete. He’d been sleeping on the couch for five months solid, just to get any sleep at all.

“Look, man, that’s just trouble couples go through,” Shane comforted. “It’s just a phase.”

Rick would concur if said phase hadn’t lasted the entire length of their marriage. It had started on their honeymoon, their first time naked together, when Lori had laughingly expressed her disappointment in the size of his offering. The attraction each had expected to feel had just never shown up.

“I’m surprised you’ve even got anything left to work with, considering how long she’s been standing on your balls.”

Rick’s brows popped up, as he glanced over to his friend. 

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, baby,” Shane drawled, followed by a low encouraging hum. “We gotta go get your balls back. Let’s go hunting this weekend.”

A grin pulled at Rick’s face before he turned away and let it drop. “Can’t this weekend. Last thing she said to me this morning: _Sometimes I wonder if you even care about us at all_. She said that in front of our kid. Imagine going to school with that in your head.”

It sounded like all the air whooshed out of Shane beside him. When he looked, Shane had his head bowed. Rick soaked up the sympathy offered. Shane knew the cruelty of Lori’s words. Shane Walsh held as gospel that there was nothing on God’s green earth more important to Rick Grimes than his son. When Shane finally overcame his shock, he held Rick’s gaze with ferocity.

“Hell, let’s go pick him up from school. We’ll take him with us.”

“Lori’s getting him. Besides, you know he hates hunting.”

“Then we’ll go camping instead, and yeah, I know he won’t sleep outside. We can borrow your dad’s RV like we used to.”

Rick gave him a grateful smile. “He still gets carsick.”

Shane laughed. They stopped by Rite Aid on the way, to buy some Dramamine.

Pocketing her keys in her full-length, grey sundress, Lori squinted at the early afternoon sun outside her door. It was a lovely, Georgian November day, and she didn’t mind the walk to Carl’s school, even if she had to pretend her smile for her neighbors was genuine. For the privilege of walking on it, this street required a white smile and tasteful makeup and her long, wavy (and generally disobedient) hair pulled into an updo.

She strolled onto the schoolyard, a shadow among the pastels of her fellow stay-at-home moms. Taking her usual bench in the shade, she surveyed the scene as she would a bed of flowers. No one had the gumption to take her spot, not even the moms-to-be, swollen-bellied and fat-ankled in the heat. No, Lori was married to law enforcement. She carried his mantle of status on her thin, angular shoulders.

On days like these she liked it, because no one tried to step into her space, leaving half the bench clear for her friend, Paula, who appeared coming from the other direction a moment later. Paula sat with a groan, kicking her legs out, rebelling against the unspoken dress code with a pair of clean, new sneakers instead of more formal shoes. Lori didn’t like noticing things like that, but it was like reflex.

Every day had been Sunday best for her pastor father and her pastor’s wife mother, not only in church dress but in church manner: sit up straight, don’t talk back, and pray as the method to cure all things. She glanced over at Paula who was the kind of Christian she wished she was. Life had put Paula through the wringer enough times that she didn’t take it personally anymore, didn’t rage against God and man. She had given up the immature notion, which Lori still clung to, that she’d been cheated in this life.

“I know that look,” Paula prompted, tossing her red bangs from her face, “when you get _really quiet_. So, you going to tell me?”

“We had a fight this morning. It got ugly.” Lori shook her head, silver bell earrings tinkling as though trying to cheer her up. “Hurtful.”

Lori kept her voice soft, conscious of the other private conversations going on around them. Women binding together over their secrets stood close to each other on the grass. 

Paula quieted to match. “I’m sorry, hun.”

“If we’re being honest, he wasn’t the jerk.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

“He was trying so hard to be reasonable, it just pushed my buttons all the more.” She bit at her lips and glanced over at the ever-compassionate face of her friend. “God, I sometimes wish he would just have it out with me. Blow up!” Lori chuckled to herself, though she'd meant it—she didn't know how else she'd ever find out what was inside that man.

Paula smiled and rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s one problem I don’t have with Tom.”

“But you still love him.”

“Mm, sure I do. Might as well, we’re lifers.”

“I admire your pragmatism,” she mocked lowly.

“You still love Rick?” Paula asked gentling her tone.

“I been asking myself that a lot.”

It had been the only thing on her mind today, in fact.

_She stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him kiss the top of Carl’s head, as their son finished his bowl of cereal. Rick didn’t even turn to her, just headed straight for the front door._

_“What is this?” she called to him._

_He stopped. She knew he had to stop. He was too good of a man to not acknowledge his wife._

_“This is a normal Friday morning at the end of a long week.”_

_He’d been flitting through the house before and after work like a ghost—not like a husband. Days like this, she hated him._

_“You don’t eat breakfast with us, then you rush out the door. That’s your idea of normal?”_

_“I cleared my weekend; we’ll be together without interruption.”_

_“Oh,_ a weekend _, like that’s going to make up for the past fifteen years! When is this going to change, Rick? Do you even want it to change? Sometimes I wonder if you even care about us at all.”_

_He flinched like he’d been punched in the gut. She refused to glance toward Carl, when he did. He looked back at her, grim but determined._

_“I have to go now. I want you to think back over the past fifteen years and ask yourself if I have ever done anything to you or to Carl that was uncaring.”_

He hadn’t, but she couldn’t decide if not uncaring was the same as loving.

“I’m trying to remember how that love thing works,” she continued. “Maybe our only real problem is that we got married _so young_. And it’s been—“

 _Nothing like I expected_. The growl of a high performance engine interrupted her. She and Paula watched the arrival of the sheriff’s blue and white in the parking lot. Three years as a sheriff’s wife, yet every time she saw that car, she froze for a moment as though caught in an infraction.

“Excuse me,” she bade her friend stiffly, as she rose to meet her approaching husband and his partner.

She couldn’t judge his mood, except that no emergency seemed forthcoming. Rick kept his eyes down to shade them from the sun, until he set his sheriff’s hat on his head, wide-brimmed and brown with its gold braid. Shane lingered in the grass by the car, looking anywhere but at her.

“I’m taking the initiative on a change,” Rick began, fixing his gaze over her shoulder. Her words flew back into her face, gently as they were returned, making her blink rapidly. “I want to take Carl camping. I want to leave now.”

The ringing of the school bell seemed to emphasize his words. She knew she always had a say, but he kept his hat on, showing damn well that he was not in the mood to defer to her in this. 

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing our schedules are cleared this weekend.”

He relaxed a fraction then pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin. Carl must have emerged from the school building behind her. She saw Shane crouch down, waving and smiling fondly. Carl rushed to him with the same hero worship it didn’t look like he’d ever outgrow.

“Shane’s going to buy the groceries,” Rick cut in. “All we have to do is get our clothing and our toothbrushes. The RV is still stocked with everything else. I called Hershel to check.” 

“Fine.” 

He nodded at her, proper and respectful, as usual. Maybe it would be good to get out of town, get some perspective. They’d always enjoyed camping as a family. If there was anything left between them to build on, she couldn’t think of a better place to go find it. She watched Shane and Carl talking animatedly together. She’d caught the hint that he was coming with—often had in the past. It could be useful to have him keeping Carl company, to give she and Rick a little time to themselves.

A glance in the side mirror showed the RV not too far behind him, as Shane drove ahead. In the open seat of his Jeep, long shadows blinked over him from the trees on either side of the road. They’d left behind the well-groomed lands of farm fields and water towers and electrical transformers. The final leg of this drive was all forest. 

He blessed the cooling wind that blew over his face and arms and chest. Cold knuckles on the wheel anchored him in the here and now, as his mind tried to float into a warm dream. Hershel’s farm had a view of a valley with a stream snaking through its center. His well water had a low earth taste that Shane had imagined to be magic in his youth. His house had smelled of the roasted chicken in butter he’d made them for supper, when they’d arrived for the RV. Shane had fought back his longing as the wide, white tablecloth had brushed against his knees. 

_Not yet_ , he’d told himself, _not yet_.

The deal was struck with himself, and he would not break it. He lived well below his means in a one-bedroom apartment downtown, no one to support but himself. Every penny he could save he’d saved since sixteen, imagining each hard piece of copper transforming into another footfall of land he could walk with a good man beside him one day. Tonight, he was in the cold. He was content here. A second life was coming, at the end of his service.

Rick stared at Shane through the shifting flames of the campfire. His friend sat in his lawn chair with hands clasped between his knees and head bowed, gaze on the deepest coals, white and fluttering with heat. After a visit to the Grimes’ farm, Shane always seemed unsettled.

There was also the fact that Lori had scolded him for his grocery choices, as she’d been organizing the camper. Corn nuts and spice drops and beef jerky, pork & beans and instant oatmeal and bottles of cola had all made Rick smile and Lori frown. Shane was trying to be on his best behavior, but Rick knew his partner wasn’t getting what he wanted—a chance to relax.

Rick couldn’t claim to be doing any better. Even Carl seemed to notice, as he snuggled against his chest, eyes tracking from his father’s face above him to Shane, who now watched them through the wavering, orange glow. Lori scooted her chair closer to Rick’s, one hand reaching for Carl’s long, brown bangs to card through them. Rick placed his hand over hers and gave it a little nudge. 

“Hey, let him sleep,” he said softly. 

Lori yanked her hand away, eyes gone round. He hadn’t meant it as an affront. After s’mores and campfire stories, it was past Carl’s bedtime. Rick was waiting for him to settle down enough to put him into the bunk in the RV, and damn it, if he didn’t associate Lori’s touch with a hindrance to sleep more than a help. 

“Hey,” Shane said drawing the word out—quiet and slow. “Look who’s ready for bed.” 

Rick flushed with shame at their conflict being witnessed. Shane had risen to bend in front of them. Carl reached for him, as though eager to be out from between his parents. 

“Kiss him goodnight,” Shane prompted, eyes on Rick. 

He curled down to kiss his son’s forehead, before Shane lifted him and carried him to the RV. His son was still small for twelve and not just in size. 

“I need bear watch,” Rick heard Carl remind. 

“I’m heading right up there after I put you down, young sir.” 

Carl’s little laugh made Rick smile, even as Lori rose from beside him to follow them in to say her goodnight. Rick let out a sigh at that familiar feeling of pressure relieving, when Lori stepped away. Damn, maybe Shane was right about his balls. Behind him, he heard Shane climb the metal ladder up the side of the camper to the lawn chair set on its roof, giving Carl the sense of security he needed to fall asleep. 

Lori rejoined her husband by the fire, wedding album under her arm. She would give him a chance to at least try to make up for pushing her hand away from her own son. He stayed seated without complaint and looked at the album, which she opened to balance between the arms of their chairs.

Lori ran a fingertip over the slick plastic covering their wedding portrait, as if she could smooth the ill-fitting shoulder of Rick’s jacket. No time for tailoring nor rehearsals nor planning, he’d had to take a leave of absence from the police academy just to get married. Never a more dutiful man has she met, he’d returned to class the day after the ceremony. Much as she tried not to show it, he bored her beyond words.

Her parents had pushed the wedding into fruition three months after their engagement, that giggling plan for a "perfect family" they’d made on the Ferris wheel at the senior class graduation trip. It had seemed so romantic, her second chance after lost love. Her high school steady—first love, first lover, first in her heart—had put her aside that spring in pursuit of his scholarship to a college up north.

She was aware enough now to know that her parents’ enthusiasm had been more toward her not making a fool of herself with another boy. If Rick was willing to do the right thing, they were all for it. Do the right thing, he has, but without any of the romance she’d thought that implied. She had imagined him in a smart, dark uniform, looking down from horseback with a relentlessly noble gaze. Instead he was just another tan & brown—overwhelmed, exhausted, and rarely smiling.

Thumbing through the pages without really looking, she watched Rick frown in confusion. 

“It looks like you’re leaning away from me in every picture.” 

In a glance, she saw herself straining to stay a few inches apart from her groom in each pose. 

“I was having the best hair day of my life,” she sighed. “I didn’t want to ruin it.”

They should have been able to laugh about it. She closed the album and placed it flat on her knees. In the silence, the fire popped and cracked. The wood turned brittle from the drying heat, fell apart, and grayed. She felt weighted to the woven plastic seat of her chair. Cold climbed her limbs and the back of her neck.

“What’s in your pocket?” she murmured. 

“Hmm?”

“I saw you pull something out of the photo album cabinet, before we left.”

Rick glanced at her with tired eyes, before leaning back and pushing his hips forward to reach into his jeans front pocket. He passed a little, white-backed rectangle over.

“Thought Shane might get a laugh out of it.”

The photo showed a neat cluster of children in front of low bookshelves; “East Hills Elementary: Fourth Grade” was printed below. She instantly picked out Shane and Rick. Even with a pitiful, farmer’s son buzz cut, she recognized that same noble Grimes’ nose. Shane had apparently already mastered his resting scowl.

“He looks like a tough little kid,” she commented.

“I just remember how fast he was.” 

When she looked over, he was staring soft-eyed at the low, nearly transparent licks of fire.

“What’s the joke?”

“Ah,” Rick hesitated.

This was a part of his life that she’d had no part of. She hadn’t moved to their school district till eighth grade. Soon after, she’d spent all her time glued to her first love Roland’s side. She shivered, as her push for more common ground had only stretched the space between them. Rick cleared his throat.

“I learned that summer that I would never make it as a criminal. We played cops and robbers together every day. Shane was always the cop.”

Rick remembered that it had been the only way Shane’s rather strict and unsmiling father had let them play together—as long as it furthered Shane’s legacy as a third generation police officer. Rick’s father had been, in a word, unavailable. It had been a little more than a year since Rick’s mother had run off, not that anyone could blame her, as Hershel hadn’t sobered up till she did. Even dry, however, he’d had a long way to go.

“I always thought I could make it to that little myrtle at the corner of his front lawn. If I could have just gotten there and dodged around the trunk, I might have had a chance. I never made it to that tree, not once. He was always right there on my back, tying on the homemade cuffs, and dragging me up the driveway to his dad’s Cadillac to…”

Rick stopped himself, dropping his head to hide the smile he felt on his face. It had been nothing more than a children’s game, yet he still let himself skip forward blithely.

“…put me in and make his arrest,” he finished.

A glance at Lori showed no smile but no expectation of more either. The in-between he’d managed to keep to himself. He didn’t know if he could put it into words had he been willing, that in-between place where everything had been possible. The world they’d made up as they went along.

It had been born of the effort of hours and hours of wandering in town. He and Shane would walk together to the bowling alley, where Rick would pick up pulled pull-tab cards from the asphalt of the parking lot, as Shane carefully turned his head away to watch out for trouble. They would sneak behind the local bar so Rick could toe through garbage by the dumpster for stray plastic swizzle sticks, while Shane kept lookout around the corner.

Upon returning to the Walshes' house, Rick had about a minute to choose his hiding place, while Shane went in to get his bandana cuffs, his spiral-bound notebook, and his cardboard sheriff’s star. As soon as Shane stepped back out of his house, he was on the hunt. There weren’t many places to hide—between the yew bushes, behind the car, around the side of the house—so Rick would keep to simple strategy and try to lunge out when Shane’s back was turned. If he made it out of the yard, he won. He never won.

Inevitably, he would find himself bent over the hood of the car, squirming slightly for realism. He’d let Shane tell him there was nowhere for him to go and then grumble back about not going quietly, even as he stilled for Shane to start his pat down. Shane worked head to toe, one hand always gripped around the fabric between Rick’s wrists, because Rick liked to fake a bolt away now and again.

Then would come the culmination of their day’s work. Shane found the pull-tabs rolled into his sleeve and laid them one by one on the Seville’s cherry paint. In the notebook, Shane recorded in detail the evidence of Rick’s illegal gambling. 

_“You think I wouldn’t know what this is?”_

Shane found the bundle of chicory stems tucked into Rick’s waistband. His drug habit was jotted down. Rick’s right pocket yielded a fistful of stolen jewels to catalogue; silvery limestone cubes, slick milky quartz, and a particularly sparkling chunk of granite. 

_“And where did this come from?”_

Rick lifted his head to see Shane’s reaction to such a rare find from his left pocket. Shane gave him his best intense cop stare and pushed his head gently back down, till his cheek was pressed on the warm metal once more.

_“You’re not going anywhere till you talk.”_

Shane never failed to treat his biggest scores with the attention they deserved. Rick had been lucky enough to spot a little plastic ring in the grass behind the basketball hoops at the playground. It was painted metallic gold with a translucent red plastic gem set in the middle.

_“I’m not telling you anything.”_

There was never a more proud failed criminal than Rick. That shiny ring became a key element to his criminal history from then on. That day, however, it was the green swizzle stick sword slotted in his sock that had Shane hauling him up and folding him into the back seat. He shut him in and returned to studying his notebook long enough for Rick to wiggle out of his cuffs and make his daring escape through the opposite door, only to walk back around to Shane’s side to see what he’d written.

_Suspect carrying concealed weapon:_

_Short-bladed dagger._

Lori noticed Rick startle, as she passed his photo back to him. Anger tightened her shoulders while she compared the multitude of photos she’d brought to the one he had. Rick would rather lose himself in a childish memory of Shane chasing him across the lawn like a dog than take ownership of his adult life with her.

In honesty, she knew what that memory meant to him, because she’d felt that once: simple devotion. She’d just never felt it for Rick, nor would she. She was unwilling to feel it for anyone again. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that her husband could feel the lack.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, rising. 

He rose too, but she didn’t turn to him. She didn’t need to hear his excuses tonight, about being restless again and not wanting to keep her awake. When they’d made camp, she’d watched him set up a second cot in Shane’s tent.

She glanced up at a flash of light in the black sky. Too high to touch down or even make a sound, lightning flared and faded in vast pulses above the clouds. When Shane raised his ball cap in polite gesture from the roof, the white stitching of POLICE cleared the darkness. She nodded to him and entered the RV to take her bunk above Carl’s, reminded of why she stayed year after year. 

Earthly protection for when her prayers failed; Rick provided. Crime in the city was low. They lived in a well-appointed home in a good neighborhood. Carl went to an excellent school. Rick had never been seriously injured on the job. He was consistently promoted. Eventually he’d inherit his father’s good, working farm. 

She had nothing to worry about. She had everything—yet it all felt so fragile, as though one great gust of wind could blow it all away. 

And she kept praying for a storm.


	2. Chapter 2

Lori set aside Rick's full bowl from the stack of four she'd carried into the RV. The other three were empty of their oatmeal but for the tacky, artificial maple residue clinging to the sides. She turned on the water in the small sink and squirted some equally strong-smelling, lemon dishwashing liquid onto a sponge. It helped her breathe in the stuffy, enclosed space.

She'd been left behind to wait for Rick to wake up. Shane was taking Carl down to the quarry "to fish" with just a silver bucket in hand. She didn’t know what that was about. She didn't know how Rick remained asleep this late into the morning either. It wasn’t like him. Calling himself a restless sleeper wasn’t just an excuse for sleeping in the den; he actually was a very early riser, often leaving for work before she'd even gotten up. Maybe it was the fresh air.

Maybe it was what she kept trying to tell herself it wasn’t; maybe Rick just didn’t like her all that much. He didn’t act like he did. Yes, he was always perfectly respectful, but there was a patronizing air about it—like he was acting respectfully because it was his duty to and not because he had any real respect for her. It made her mad. It made it almost impossible to live with him some days.

Staring down into the iridescent swirl of soap in the yellow plastic bowl, she wondered again if there was anything right between them at all. She’d thought camping would help to find it, but it wasn’t realistic she’d realized, once she’d thought through the reason they’d stopped camping years ago. They’d had a fight on the way to the campground that had soured the trip, soured a lot of things really.

Rick had been driving the RV while Lori had navigated in the passenger seat. Carl and Shane had sat at the little table behind them. She’d heard Carl’s sudden exclamation of ‘wow’ and turned to see Shane dissembling his shotgun on the table to clean it, cloths and oil arrayed around the parts of the firearm. She’d protested instantly, expecting Rick to back her up, but instead he’d kept quiet as Shane had lectured her on how gun education saved lives, about the family gun safety classes he taught at the range, about the students even younger than Carl.

When she’d had no choice but to resort to shouting, Rick had finally stepped in by telling Shane that was enough. The gun had been put away, but she'd felt no safer. She’d been treated as a tantruming child and not as a mother trying to protect her son. There had been a horror in her heart that day. She knew Rick loved Carl, but it was not the same love she felt. Their lives were too different.

The warm, close air inside the nylon tent gently buoyed Rick into wakefulness. He swam in sunlight. Rolling to his side, he found Shane’s cot empty. He hadn’t had a chance to speak to his friend last night. After ducking into the tent as soon as Lori went to bed, Rick had fallen asleep at once and apparently slept like the dead.

Rick yawned and let his arm drop over the side of the cot to reach for his pants and check the time. His watch wasn’t in his pocket where he’d put it last night. He searched about in his pile of clothing, then beneath his cot, and finally around the tent. He laughed outright, when he saw his watch set in a neat line with the rest of his belongings on Shane’s cot. Shane must have heard into his reminiscence from the roof.

Here sat his gathered treasures; watch, wallet, change, bandana, pocket knife, cell phone, the photo of them, and at the end a slip of folded paper looking too neat and uncreased to have spent time in his pockets. He swallowed with a dry mouth and wondered what Shane had written. Everything he carried today looked solid and unchangeable to his eyes. He slid the note into his pocket unread. If Shane could see what he couldn’t anymore, he didn’t want to know. 

No one was out and about at the campsite. Fingers of white-gray smoke trailed up from the fire pit toward the sky. He stepped across the bare soil dampened and darkened by morning dew. Climbing into the RV, he found Lori washing out bowls in the sink.

“Here,” she said passing one into his hands.

He smelled the fake maple of the instant oatmeal. The cold, congealed lump in his bowl did not appeal.

“They went fishing.”

She pushed past him. Mornings were her favorite time to pick a fight, and it looked like this one would be no different. He scraped the oats into the garbage and rinsed his bowl. It was difficult to imagine a whole day of this—trying to play cards, going for a hike, roasting hot dogs—all with this same old tension. When he ventured back out, Lori was standing with her arms crossed over her chest.

As she opened her mouth for whatever complaint she had to lodge, he started over top, “I’m going to go ahead and check on them.”

He could feel her eyes on his back, as he walked away. He was going to pay for that later, but he just kept walking. They weren’t fishing, of course. Rick knew Shane did not have the patience for that. He found them in the abandoned quarry playing in the pool of water at the base of the rock walls. From above them he could see Carl’s sneakers on the shore. His son’s pant legs were rolled up and he’d waded in to his knees. 

Shane on the other hand was chest deep in the water with all his clothes on. He had the fishing bucket flashing silver, as he splashed great draughts of water. Carl screamed with delight, while he dodged them. Rick grinned and watched, until he saw Lori storming down the trail below him. Rick hurried to follow, but he was a few steps behind.

“You told me you were going fishing. It’s November. Carl, you know better than to swim in November.”

Shane glanced over Lori’s shoulder and grinned, as Rick arrived behind her.

“It’s sixty-five degrees out, and he’s barely wet.”

“Shane, shut up,” Lori snapped. “Carl, put on your shoes and come on.”

Shane was smart enough to shut up this time. Lori stomped past Rick with Carl’s hand in hers. Rick was not going to let this escalate. 

“Gotta wait out her mood,” he said sitting next to Shane on a large rock.

Shane put his arm over his shoulders, getting him wet. Rick smiled knowing he was about to get razzed.

“So…”

It was all Shane needed to say, before they were both laughing.

“I borrowed Daddy’s rifle,” Rick prompted, “and stashed it in the RV’s safe-box.”

Shane knew he only ever used that gun for hunting.

“I stowed my shotgun in the Jeep,” Shane admitted.

Rick chuffed bemusement.

When they came back to camp, Lori and Carl were bent over homework at the picnic table.

“We’re going hunting for a couple hours,” Rick announced, as he stepped out of the RV with his father’s rifle hanging over his shoulder. 

Shane, shotgun strapped against his back and dry clothes changed into, headed into the RV for supplies.

“Good,” Lori began, “that’ll give Carl and I some peace to—“

“I want to go with you,” Carl interrupted, freezing them both. 

The last thing Rick wanted was for his son to end up in the middle of another argument.

“You said you hate hunting,” Rick reminded. 

“That was when I was like six.” 

“Carl, you can’t get out of your homework this way,” Lori argued. 

“But I don’t want to do homework during a vacation.” 

“He has never been prone to procrastination,” she said to Rick sharply, like he had somehow caused the change in Carl’s behavior. 

“He’ll be a teenager in five months,” Rick commented with a defusing smile, as Shane emerged. “We’ll have to get used to being challenged.” 

“That’s not funny,” she shot back, “Do you even—“

She stopped herself before ‘care,’ but they all heard it. 

“Carl will finish his homework after lunch. Right, Carl?” Rick offered, while Shane returned to his side, pockets of his cargo pants bulging with enough food for a midday meal.

His son nodded, hopping up. Rick stared at Lori, waiting for more objections. She ground her teeth and said nothing. With no polite parting, Rick turned and fled. He was angry. He knew it. Shane knew it. Shane let him forge ahead on the trail, as far and as fast as he wanted to go, keeping Carl occupied behind him. 

After a while Rick noticed the leaves dragging against his clothing as the trail narrowed. Under his boots the dirt had become looser for lack of travel. The urge to get away had overwhelmed him. It’d been four years since he and Shane had last had a hunting trip together; having risen too high up the chain of command to be out of reach of the sheriff’s department for long.

The quiet that surrounded him today was a rare treat. There were only small sounds; birds, bugs, trees creaking, and underbrush shivering back into place as he passed. The adrenaline dropped all at once, and he remembered why he and Shane had used this as their burnout prevention. Raising his eyes to the woods, he saw renewal painted there, spring green in the warm autumn, like all things were possible.

“I’m hungry,” Carl observed behind him.

Rick laughed and fell back to rejoin his hunting party, following Shane off of the trail toward a wide-topped walnut tree and the open grass beneath. Shane shrugged off his blue overshirt for Carl to use as a seat, while Rick laid down his bandana as Carl’s table. Patience for Carl’s finickiness was no hardship, though Rick looked forward to the coming teenage years and watching Carl eating them out of house and home with a youth’s carelessness.

The sharp scent of the walnut’s tannins roused Rick’s stomach. He kept reaching out his hand for Shane to tumble in more corn nuts, beef jerky, and spice drops from the little plastic bags, water bottle thumping there once in a while too. After a bit, he noticed Shane make a quiet sound of humor each time.

“What?”

“Good to see your appetite back,” Shane said with a smirk. “Guess I outta get you out from behind that desk more.”

“What can I say? I love paperwork.”

“And that is the only reason your star says sheriff and mine says deputy.”

“I know it, but we’re not on duty today.”

“Ah, been too long.”

“Yeah,” Rick agreed with a pang of loss at the sacrifices he’d made for promotion.

“Yeah,” Shane picked back up, “little did we know Carl here was just aching to be brought on a hunting trip.”

“What are we hunting?” Carl asked.

Both men burst out laughing. Carl frowned at them, though his eyes were bright with curiosity.

“My dad’s a hunter,” Shane started, “and he used to bring a deer home every year. He’d be so proud that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t like the taste of venison.”

Carl made a grossed out face.

“Yeah,” Shane noticed with a smile, “that’s the feeling. Now imagine the face your mom would make if Rick walked in with a deer over his shoulders.”

“I wouldn’t _make it_ in,” Rick amended.

“Right,” Shane bounced back, “so, would you believe that neither of these here Georgia-bred boys has ever taken a shot on a hunting trip?”

“Then why do you need guns?” Carl asked.

Shane saw Rick lick his lips in hesitation. Carl was sensitive to the dangers of Rick’s job, and telling him about how two off-duty cops, who couldn’t call in for backup, needed to be each others’ was a bit too adult of a concept.

“It’s because of bears, isn’t it?” Carl guessed, checking around him nervously.

Shane knew that look, either distract Carl now or hustle him all the way back to camp in a panic and get it from Lori again. He put a hand on Carl’s shoulder, feeling him poised for flight.

“Hey,” Shane talked him down, “no matter what, we’re going to take care of you, alright?”

Carl looked from Shane to his dad, breathing slowing again, and nodded.

“Alright,” Shane continued, pulling a pack of cards out of his pocket, “now, we’re off duty and you’re about a million miles away from your mom, so let’s break some rules.”

Poker with spice drops kept Carl engaged enough to cool him all the way back down. That is, until a rustle in the brush up the game trail startled him to his feet. Shane and Rick stood too, hoping he wasn’t about to flee. Game trails carried game; they probably should have mentioned that to him earlier.

Carl was backing away with wide eyes, when a little buck stepped into sight. He stopped himself, instantly intrigued. The buck seemed just as intrigued though likely with a question about handouts. 

“You ate all the corn nuts,” Shane whispered to Rick.

Shane heard Rick try to suppress his laugh, though the buck’s tall ears swiveled their way. Carl shushed them on his way past, and Shane popped brows at Rick over this newfound courage. Carl continued to impress, as he started to inch forward with the slow, smooth movements of a stalker. 

Though the animal was twice Carl’s size, he was too small to rut and probably not aggressive. The little set of antlers bowed over the buck’s head were still in velvet despite how deep into rutting season it was. Velvet-wrapped or not, Shane didn’t want Carl getting too close. He drew breath to call him back.

_CRACK._

The sky echoed.

The buck fell.

Carl fell.

Shane’s breath caught in his chest, as the telltale resonation cleared the air. He looked to Rick who looked back, before they dug their feet into the dirt and sprang forward. Rick dropped down over his son, as Shane took up defensive position above them, shotgun butt pulled tight to his shoulder. Gazing straight down the sights, he centered on the threat at once.

“Drop your weapon! Get down on the ground! Deputy telling you to drop down now. Hands behind your head. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

The rotund man in the hunting vest obeyed with clear surprise, “I’m Otis. I own this land. I’m hunting.”

“Shane!” Rick’s voice was high and tight. “There’s no cell service.”

“You shot a sheriff’s son,” Shane barked to the man at his feet.

“No, no, I was aiming for the deer. I swear I didn’t see him.”

“How far to your home?”

“Twenty-minute walk.”

“Rick, pick him up, we’re going,” Shane directed. “Otis, get on your feet. There is a loaded shotgun in your back and you are running. Now!”

Otis crashed through the woods with Shane giving him a nudge in the back every time he slowed.

“It’s just over that hill,” the man panted out, when the trees started to show a clearing ahead.

“Rick, go, go, go,” Shane urged, and Rick tore out ahead as fast as he could with his son clutched against his chest, limbs lolling terrifyingly limp.

“My daughter’s a nurse,” Otis yelled out, as Shane saw Rick break out into an open field, farmhouse in sight.

“Keep moving,” he commanded.

As soon as Shane saw a woman rushing down the lane toward them, he started to give her shouted directions to go pick up Lori from the campsite and drive her straight to the hospital. 

“Ambulance is on the way,” another woman greeted, as Shane rushed up the porch steps.

Shane nodded and requested the phone and the receiving hospital’s name to send Hershel there. He tried to fill the worried granddad in, while keeping half his attention on Rick and Carl in the other room with a third woman, who was monitoring Carl on the bed. She looked too young to be a nurse, but she was at least keeping Rick focused on the positives, as she pressed a white cloth to the bleeding side of his son. Shane hurried off the phone to clutch onto the wooden doorway, when he saw Carl’s eyes flutter open.

“Dad?” Carl greeted Rick, who knelt by the bed, hunched close.

“I’m right here.”

“Ow.”

“I know, baby. Just lie still.”

“Did you see?”

“See what?”

“Did you see how close I got to the deer? It was so pretty.”

“Yeah, I saw,” Rick said, swiping at the tears Shane could see welling up.

“You’re bleeding, Dad,” Carl said before fading back out.

“Carl?”

“He’s just fainted,” the young nurse said, standing on the other side of the bed with Carl’s wrist in her hand. “Pulse is still good. We’re still doing fine here. I’m not going to take my eyes off of him. You should go wash up, so you don’t confuse the EMTs.”

Rick looked up helplessly, so Shane stepped forward to lead him into the washroom the women pointed him toward. He propped Rick against the wall beside the sink, leaning him side-first there to keep him from seeing himself in the mirror. He didn’t need to see his son’s blood painted across his cheek, where he’d wiped at his tears. Shane wetted down a pink hand towel to clean Rick’s face.

“Hey, look at me,” he prompted, when Rick’s head dropped. “I don’t want you passing out on me.”

“I have to be strong,” Rick agreed, trying to take the cloth away, as Shane smoothed it over his features.

“You were,” Shane reminded, “hey, keep looking at me.”

He started on Rick’s hands now, gently washing them down in the sink.

“You carried him all the way here,” Shane continued. “To help.”

“She’s a good nurse.”

“Yeah, he’s in good hands. He’ll be with the doctors soon. Everything is going exactly right.”

He could see Rick’s eyes coming back into focus, as the world slowed from its frantic rush. He watched Rick take a real breath.

“There you go,” he encouraged, holding Rick’s gaze as he started to unbutton the man’s shirt.

They both turned at the sound of the ambulance coming up the drive. Rick left with his shirt half-undone.

“We can follow them,” Otis offered as the ambulance took them away. 

“Take me to the campground,” Shane directed.

As soon as Otis drove away from dropping him back at the campsite, Shane fell down to the ground on elbows and knees and forehead, bowed over like his very bones had given up. He couldn’t lose Carl. He couldn’t. He dug his fingers into the dirt. He’d wanted to kill that hunter, so badly, but he’d had enough wisdom to know it wouldn’t do any good to kill an innocent man, a man who’d made a perfect shot through a buck’s heart.

He was always telling Rick on the job, when Rick got too thoughtful about things, that they were not the judges here. Their job was simple and brutish: enforce the law, by any means necessary. Lie, cheat, steal, beat, threaten, and bribe. They did the work that other people were too weak to do, but that needed to be done. They were a force, of good, keeping order in the chaos. 

This was order. This was no broken laws. This was no need for force. This was the powerlessness that he’d always hated. Down here on the ground, this afternoon, Shane couldn’t fight it. It had taken him down and here he was. He was surprised by how quiet it was around him, like the world was giving him a moment. Even more surprisingly, it was enough.

Shane lifted his head, brushing the dirt from his face. The sun was high now, finding its way through the leaves in droplets of light like a gentle rain. He could feel it like a warm patter on his arms and nape, while he gathered the things that Rick would need.

Lori blamed Rick, then she blamed the hunter, then she blamed herself, then she blamed Rick again. Rick told her it was an accident. She didn’t listen. He didn’t expect her to. He wasn’t really listening to her either. All he was listening for was the sound of the surgeon’s voice giving him good news.

“Mr. and Mrs. Grimes,” the petite woman in scrubs greeted, bringing Rick to his feet. “Your son was very lucky today. Most of the bullet fragments lodged in his ribs. One fragment got through, but we’ve removed it and repaired the damaged artery in his abdomen with laparoscopy. It was minimally invasive and we expect a full and speedy recovery.”

“Thank you,” Rick said though kept alert, sensing an addendum coming.

“He’s not out of surgery yet, because the remaining fragments need to be removed. We can’t remove them, until we receive the blood that’s being airlifted in for him. We expect it in less than two hours; however, if either of you are able to donate, we can complete his surgery now.”

Rick shook his head at a flash of memory, while the doctor continued on about his son’s rare blood type. He’d had take Carl for a full physical to be admitted to the fancy kindergarten that Lori had chosen. He remembered taking a blue card in to the school’s nurse afterward, filled out with Carl’s emergency medical information and their physician’s notes. Blood type had had a special comment by it in red ink: _Rare AB Variant_. He and Lori were both A. Two A's do not make an AB. That had been a hard day.

Rick knew enough to know that the less time spent under anesthesia, the better. The surgeon was trying to downplay her urgency, but Rick could read between the lines. He heard the surgeon asking about nearby relatives for a possible match.

“How far is his father?” Rick asked.

Lori wouldn’t look at him.

“I don’t even know who he is, Lori,” Rick pleaded.

“An hour, maybe,” she gave up tightly, with no name offered.

Rick felt himself hit a wall and looked to the surgeon for help.

“The more quickly we can get your son out of surgery, the easier his recovery will be.”

“Of course, I’m sorry,” Lori relented, pulling out her phone.

Rick backed away on wobbly legs. Now that it came to it, he didn’t want a name. He didn’t want a real person to contend with in place of Lori’s amorphous secrets. A nurse found his elbow and helped him down the hallway into a private waiting room. They used these rooms to keep the peace. He felt like a suspect, and every mistake he’d ever made tallied in his mind. Getting his son the blood he needed wasn’t on that list. 

Shane’s smile dropped, when he stepped into the waiting room and Rick looked up with fear in his eyes before ducking his chin. 

“They told me full and speedy,” Shane relayed, “but you’re looking real worried.”

“No,” Rick assured, “Carl’s going to be fine.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and he still wouldn’t look up.

“Okay,” Shane replied keeping his tone soft and even, knowing he was missing something. “Lori make it here?”

Rick nodded but tears started to flow down his face. Shane could guess now at why he’d found Rick isolated from her here. He pulled a chair near and leaned close.

“Man, listen,” he began, “if she’s giving you hell about this, you just tell her it was my idea to go hunting. Tell her—“

“No, Shane,” Rick asserted with his head up and looking more focused, “it’s not on you. You being there, with me and Carl, that was everything.”

Shane felt choked up now too, as the terror they both went through today was held for a moment between them to be looked at, to be known. Rick’s gratitude shone there like a spark to his own. It hadn’t been meaningless words, when he’d told Rick that he was strong. Shane leaned forward, holding Rick around the back of the head and side of the jaw, guiding their foreheads together, sharing breath. 

“You did good,” Shane breathed out. “You did good.”

“He’s okay. My son is okay, and my partner is here,” Rick whispered, hands rising, clumsy to grip at Shane in return.

“I’m right here.”

Rick’s hands settled on the sides of his head, just holding on. Shane let Rick steady himself there, stroking his hands through Rick’s hair. It was smooth and soft and soothing to Shane as much as to Rick. Shane wondered why he didn’t do this more. Rick would let him. He was letting him handle his warm and vulnerable nape with no more than a sigh. He could touch Rick like this every day. He wanted to. The door handle rattled, pulling Rick out of his hands.

“Daddy,” Rick greeted.

Shane stood, backing away till his shoulder bumped the far wall of the narrow room. One hand leapt up to shield what must be written on his face. Hershel had been a veterinarian for twenty-five years and had to know animal instinct, when he saw it. Immediately, he was right in Shane’s face, giving him nowhere to hide. Those intense, pale eyes held his.

“I need you gone.” 

Hershel said it so quietly, so matter of fact, that Shane was nodding and moving toward the door at once. One final glance at Rick showed him glaring at the wall; that was his usual expression around Hershel. Shane was not going to make this day harder on his friend by fighting for rights to him with his father.

Just walk it off. Rick didn’t have to know. Rick wouldn’t know. Shane would find other ways to appreciate the man—any other way than that. As he started his Jeep to head home, he noticed that his right ear was still warm from where Rick had been stroking with his thumb.

“Carl’s going to be fine,” Rick said hoarsely. 

To avoid his father, he opened the bag that Shane had left at his feet. A fresh shirt sat on top. Rick tried to unbutton his bloodied one, taking up where Shane had left off. He couldn’t make his hands stop shaking enough to do the fine work. As he pulled it over his head, he felt the dull crackle of half-wet paper in his front pocket. Shane’s note from this morning was waiting there for him. He unfolded the paper, now red where once white: 

_So he’s finally gone clean._


	3. Chapter 3

“We got a call from the principal last night,” Rick told Shane between bites of his sandwich. “Apparently my son is disturbing the peace at school. He told us that if Carl doesn’t stop showing off his scar, they’ll have to suspend him.”

“He still won’t talk to a counselor?”

“No, the third one we tried, you didn’t even have to talk. It was art-based. Still wouldn’t engage with the therapist.”

“The woman you talked to?”

“She doesn’t work with kids,” Rick said, wiping his mouth and taking a drink from his water bottle. “I asked her about it though. She told me the best thing for him would be to talk to someone who knows, someone who was there. I’ve tried to talk to him, but I think it must be written on my face how scared I was. I don’t think he wants to scare me.”

“Well, geez, Rick if you want me to talk to him, you coulda just asked,” Shane teased with a tense smile.

Truth be told, he hadn’t seen Carl since the accident and wasn’t sure why Rick had kept him away these past few months.

“You know I’d do anything for that kid,” he added quietly.

Rick licked his lips and looked down, classic deflection. He shrugged his head sorta sideways, like he was trying to dislodge something.

“Lori’s worried you might trigger him, make it worse.”

Now Shane looked away, rubbing the bridge of his nose and sighing. There were a lot of things he wanted to say that he had no right to.

“She’s mad at you,” Rick admitted.

Shane grunted acknowledgment.

“She’s mad at the world,” Rick muttered.

Shane looked over with a frown, because Rick’s tone had an edge of guilt in it that he didn’t understand.

“Mad at a world that brought her son home to her safely?” Shane asked, unable to help himself.

Rick looked over and held his stare. This would normally be the point at which he defended her, told Shane that she was getting over the trauma still. When he didn’t, Shane realized that he was actually listening.

“Bring him to my place tonight,” Shane invited. “He can show off his scar as much as he wants.”

Rick exhaled into a blink of a smile, like a reflex he wasn’t even aware of.

“Want us to bring Thai?”

“And a movie.”

“He survived his first hunt,” Rick said on his way in. “He’s a man now.”

Carl had preceded him into the apartment, a white plastic bag full of food in either hand, sheriff’s hat set on his head, and a look of determination on his face. The smell of coconut milk and lemongrass wafted after him as he headed straight for the kitchen.

“I’ll get the plates,” Carl called.

Rick let out a sigh, shoulders drooping.

“Yeah,” the chagrined father said and gestured to the kitchen doorway, as Carl strode back out, three dinner plates and three soup spoons held in front of him.

Shane held his welcoming smile with difficulty. He understood now how hard it must have been for Rick to try to listen. His son was showing the signs of being a trauma survivor, and that had to hurt a parent no matter how clean their conscience. He wanted to hug Rick, but he didn’t. 

Carl didn’t show him his scar that night. He did fall asleep on the sofa though during the movie, which Rick’s cheered expression seemed to indicate was some sign of improvement. Carl had looked a little exhaustion-bruised around the eyes, a little pale, freckles standing out more on his cheeks.

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and he’s in the den with me, watching TV,” Rick whispered. 

Shane didn’t ask how long Rick had been sleeping in the den.

“I think it’s good getting him out of the house,” Rick added.

He didn’t have to say ‘and away from Lori.’ Shane caught onto where this new persona of Carl’s had originated. Act like you’re one hundred percent, so your mom doesn’t have anything to fret over anymore. That was too much weight for little shoulders to carry, and eventually Carl would drop. 

“He still like putt-putt?” Shane asked.

Rick snickered, “Remember his golfing pants?”

“Oh yeah, those green and yellow stripey things?”

“And the pink polo shirt? Gotta have outgrown ‘em by now.”

Shane groaned, “Don’t tell me we’re going to have to go shopping first.”

“You said you’d do anything for him,” Rick said with a genuine grin.

Shane laughed into the muffle of both his hands over his face.

Carl didn’t wake, when Rick lifted him from the sofa and carried him down the apartment building’s stairs, when Shane opened the truck door and Rick buckled him into the seat, when the truck started and drove them home, when Rick unbuckled him and carried him up the stairs to bed, pulled off his shoes and closed his door. Rick let out the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. It felt like he’d been holding that breath for months.

He wanted so badly to ignore Lori, as she scowled at him in the doorway of the den. His earplugs sat on the coffee table just waiting for him to slot them in and shut out the world for a while. She’d fought him on the visit to Shane’s, and it had taken all of his reasonableness to get through that argument. He didn’t think he had any left. All he really wanted to say was ‘I told you so.’

“You exhausted him,” she accused. 

There wasn’t anything he could say that would make this go his way. He sat down on the couch—his bed off and on for over a decade of irregular hours, emergency calls, evening classes, late shifts, and sleepless nights. He’d given in this year and moved his favorite bedding down here, stowed away every morning, when he got up, in the cabinet built under the window seat. 

The queen-size, black wool blanket Hershel had given them as a wedding gift was folded neatly by his hip. He placed a palm on it. Lori had rejected it as too heavy and dark. Rick loved it, even in the summer, with the central air blaring through the house. The substantial weight of it felt like an embrace. The soft black looked like the night sky. Rick was the new moon hidden beneath. His father may be terribly overbearing, but he was thoughtful too.

Rick felt a flush rise up the back of his neck, guilt not for things done but for things about to be done. For the first time, he was going to lie right to his wife’s face.

“It’s not from stress, it’s from excitement,” Rick told her. “Shane and I promised to take him to putt-putt tomorrow and buy him some clothes beforehand.”

“If he wants to go out, I can take him out.”

“It helped him to have Shane around.”

“I don’t care what that counselor said to you about it. She doesn’t even work with kids. You said so yourself.”

“We already promised him. I’m not going to break a promise,” Rick asserted. “If it doesn’t help, you can go back to blaming Shane for everything, alright?”

Oh, she was pissed now at being talked into a corner. It scared him how manipulative he could be, but not as much as what she said next.

“I don’t like it. I don’t feel good about this. I want you to remember that.”

She left with the gentle threat still singing in the air of the room. It could have been so innocent, and God, did he want to believe that it was. He’d always believed that she had their family’s best interests at heart. He’d always believed they were on the same side, but that illusion had crumbled at the hospital.

_Rick recognized him at once. Beneath the Clark Kent haircut and glasses the man now wore, Rick could see the boy he remembered from school, that long-haired, artsy type. He’d had nothing to do with him despite being in the same grade. It just worked out like that sometimes. He knew him only by reputation and that had been from the joke of Rolie and Lori and their reversible names of star-crossed love._

_Watching discretely, from the narrow, vertical window of the waiting room, Rick saw him duck around a corner with Lori and a nurse. For twelve tense minutes of inaction he couldn’t stop his mind from wondering if Carl would need glasses later, if he would shoot up as tall as that man who was taller than Rick was, if he would be handsome in that same classical way. When Roland reappeared, Lori was talking to his back, following him as he seemed in a hurry to leave._

_“I’ll be back in a second,” Rick told Hershel._

_The fewer people trying to keep this a secret from Carl the better. He knew it would have to come out one day, but the more chance Rick had to choose the time and place, the better he could make it for his son. He took a different hallway than Roland had escaped down, after Lori had thrown her hands wide in frustration. Rick caught him at his car in the parking lot._

_“You knew?”_

_Rick’s question startled him for a moment, but he didn’t put up defenses. Rick was not on the attack, and he could seem to read that. He turned to face him fully. It was brave._

_“Yes, from the beginning,” Roland confirmed. “She had told me she was on birth control.”_

_There was hurt in the man’s eyes still, the kind of pain that would probably never go away. He glanced behind Rick, and Rick turned to see Lori crossing the lot toward them._

_“I have a good life—a wife, a daughter, a job that I love, teaching sixth grade math,” Rolie said to him. “I like my life just the way it is.”_

_Lori had joined them now, a look of apprehension on her face. Rick’s apprehensions, in contrast, were fading._

_“It was good of you to come,” he offered in return, “and I hope to God that I never have to see you again.”_

_Rolie nodded and got into his car. As he drove away, Lori rounded on Rick._

_“He was trying to help,” she protested._

_“And I thanked him. What more do you want from me?”_

_She just shook her head._

That last exchange with Lori played over and over and over in his mind. Roland had walked away from Carl with no hint of a challenge to Rick’s fatherhood. He wanted to feel comforted. Instead all he felt was fear. Lori had sided with Rolie that day, not him. Lori was not on his side.

Rick slipped in his earplugs and pulled the wool blanket up over his face and hated himself for knowing he would wake Carl up in the morning to teach him how to lie to his mother.

Shane took his time with his ice cream, well, technically mango gelato as that was the trendy thing these days. It had been a hot spring, in the mid-80s all this last week of April. The cool hallways of the mall kept the sweet from melting down his hand. He’d made Rick and Carl take a break with him halfway through the shopping not because of the heat but because of the shopping. Shane didn’t think he could take another hour of colors and clerks and crazy mazes of racks set too close together.

Carl didn’t seem to have any problem with it. He seemed to know exactly what he wanted in terms of color and fit and style. He hunted down what he needed like a beast in the jungle. It was just taking the whole jungle, seemed like, to find it. He had one half of his outfit chosen and changed into so far—a pair of pants printed in large, overlapping circles of muted grays and oranges and peaches that reminded Shane of a sunset.

“You two go on in,” Shane urged, when they stopped at the next storefront, “I’ll finish up.”

“Nah,” Rick said, pulling the cone out of his hand, “Let me help you out. Now you can go ahead in.”

Apparently, Rick was just as bad at shopping as Shane was. He took a cheerful taste.

“It’s good,” Rick taunted.

“Yeah, I know,” Shane joked back.

Rick’s fingers had brushed lightly along the backs of Shane’s on the exchange. Shane noted that his partner’s calluses were going soft. It had been too long since he’d joined Shane on the firing range. Shane had not pressed, as Carl’s injury by gunfire was still fresh. He’d have to press soon though.

“Alright, come on,” he said to Carl, “let’s show your dad that I got a sense of fashion after all.”

Carl raised a skeptical brow at Shane’s standard off-duty clothing; a black t-shirt and fatigue green cargo pants tucked into black boots.

“Okay, you can help me,” Shane acceded.

Luckily, Carl’s focus had not wavered in this new challenge, and he was quick to pick out what he needed on this last stop. Shane carried the bag of the clothes that Carl had worn here, following behind him, as Carl stepped back into the corridor to show off the new green polo shirt that matched his wide, green eyes. A sky blue and gray cap sat on his head, with a fluffy pom-pom on top. Shane wore the pink and gray version that Carl had picked out for him, barely fitting it over his full hair. Rick started to laugh as soon as he saw it.

“He looks good,” Carl countered.

Rick stopped laughing, but grinned as he passed the now mostly empty cone back to Shane.

“Oh, thanks,” Shane ribbed, “so you were just borrowing it?”

“Can I have it?” Carl asked. “I like the sugar cones.”

“Yeah,” Shane agreed, handing it down.

Carl paused, looking at it, a natural generosity prompting him to offer, “You can have a bite.”

Shane knelt beside him and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“Now this here is a golden-hearted man,” he praised with good-natured humor, taking a bite of the cone.

Carl put his hand over Shane’s on his side. 

“Can you feel it?” he asked. 

His fingers wiggled down between Shane’s to his own side. His other hand came up then, directing Shane’s hand to where he wanted it. 

“Yeah,” Shane replied, though he wasn’t sure if he was feeling or imagining a slight roughness under his fingertips through Carl’s new shirt. 

Carl nodded at him and took the cone to finish it. Shane stood and glanced at Rick who had a look of loss on his face, that look likely the reason Carl didn’t want to talk about this at home. 

“You did a good job healing,” Shane said, when it seemed Carl had no more to say. 

Carl, licking the melted gelato from his lips, looked up at him. 

“Yeah?” 

Shane nodded with serious expression. Carl nodded back. 

“I did everything the doctor told me to do, even though it sucked having to stay in bed for so long.” 

Rick laughed a little through his nose. Shane could see the nerves settling in his friend again. 

“Well, it paid off,” Shane praised, “and now you’re looking good and ready to kick our butts at golf.” 

“Oh, sunscreen,” Rick remembered. “Pharmacy’s down that way.” 

He gestured them on and listened to Shane and Carl following. Rick kept a few steps ahead to give Carl the space to finally open up. He heard his son telling Shane about having to take antibiotics that were so, so gross and about how he couldn’t breathe deeply for a month without it hurting so bad he wanted to cry. Rick’s relief was so great that he wanted to cry himself.

He wished he hadn’t waited this long to ask Shane for help. It had felt like pushing against a mountain to finally ask. His mind cast back looking for a reason for his struggle. It had used to be easy to ask Shane, and Shane had never been less than willing.

When Carl was a baby, Shane would happily come over to their old condo and help with the housework, because the still-awed, new father couldn’t bring himself to put Carl down in the evenings. Shane would fix the leak under the sink. Shane would even out the legs of the wobbly table. Shane would take Carl from Rick’s arms long enough to let Rick eat his dinner at the table with his wife. Shane would do the dishes. Shane would take out the garbage at night, on his way out.

When Carl had started to attend school and to walk along Lori’s proscribed path toward an Ivy League education, Shane’s simple offering of another set of hands had stopped seeming so valuable to her. She had complained about him being in the way, then being a distraction for Carl, and then being a bad example even. Camping trips had become Rick’s excuses to include his friend in Carl’s life—a time when another set of hands had only been logical.

The change had been so gradual that Rick had been able to grow used to the rising sound of alarms ringing in his head. Each year, Shane had been pushed out a little more, till they were here today. Out in the sunshine of late afternoon, they stood together on the putting green only by virtue of Rick’s deception. 

Shane was putting now with Carl watching and soaking up anything he could learn to help him win. Even with a competitive nature, his son still grinned and congratulated when Shane sank his shot. Carl hadn’t smiled like that in months. Rick nearly staggered at the shock of dissonance that crashed over him. All of those alarms were no longer muffled.

He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known it was that bad.

Shane had cleared off a shelf in his main room, when Carl’s collection of action DVDs, comic books, and graphic novels—all things forbidden by Lori—had grown too large to keep stacked by the sofa. He now kept his kitchen stocked with mother-banned foods like chocolate pudding cups, frozen garlic bread, and Virgil’s root beer bottles. The red, white, and blue quilt Shane’s Gran had made him had migrated from the end of his bed to the back of the sofa, where Carl could pull it down when he wanted to stretch out and doze off.

After three months of increasingly frequent visits from Rick and Carl, his apartment was beginning to feel less like residence and more like safehouse. Now that school had let out, Rick brought Carl over after nearly every shift and didn’t drive him home again till he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. 

If this was helping, Shane would let it help. He had let all of his questions go quiet for a time. He didn’t want this to be a time of questions from Rick either. This little apartment had held Shane’s dreams and plans and desires for so many years within its walls. Having Rick so often in his home, the cup of his dreams, was making it more and more difficult to hide from him the taste of them.

The three of them had gathered in the kitchen this Sunday night, tired from a day spent at the swimming lake. It was that loose, good, hard-worked feeling that Shane loved, that kept him in the gym for hours some days chasing it. He watched Rick stir marinara sauce in slow, sleepy circles. Carl chucked in a handful of chopped carrots and moved on to mushrooms. 

Neither Shane nor Rick was skilled in the kitchen. They were getting by on dinners of spaghetti with chicken or grilled ham & cheese with tomato soup. Shane made one thing well and that was pancakes, so he’d been given frying pan duty. He had the chicken breasts in there now, seasoned by Carl with some cayenne and garlic powder. 

Shane leaned his head on one arm, where it lay against the overhang of the oven hood, and enjoyed that lazy feeling that made a person want to lie on the cool floor with their best friend and share secrets. He and Rick had had a couple summer days like that as kids. When the weather was too hot to play outside, sometimes all they could do was to draw the shades against the sun and try to keep still. 

In the dim of Shane’s childhood bedroom, Rick had found out that the only real reason Shane wanted to be a cop was to drive a cop car. Shane had found out that Rick once had a dream that Shane kissed him. They’d laughed about it, and Shane had picked Rick a bouquet of white phlox that next day, which Rick had thrown at his head and then pushed him down to the ground laughing hysterically. 

Shane smiled and rolled his head to stare at his friend. The pale skin of Rick’s cheeks had darkened a bit from the sun. His ringlets had unraveled just a touch longer and lighter. A couple more wrinkles drew themselves around his eyes and mouth from a rough year. He looked so alive that Shane wanted to taste it. Rick hadn’t shaved all weekend and that Sunday stubble would feel good. 

“Mom said you’re ruining my life,” Carl told the kitchen in general, not looking up from his garlic bread instructions.

Apparently, Shane wasn’t the only one with his guard down this evening. He switched off the burner under his chicken and then reached over to do the same for Rick’s sauce, when Rick just looked stunned. This must have been the first time he’d heard about this.

“Your life doesn’t seem too bad to me,” Shane observed warmly.

“I got a B+ in geometry,” Carl argued.

“That was a very advanced class,” Rick reminded him. “Most 7th graders aren’t even doing geometry. Besides, a B+ in anything can’t ruin someone’s life.”

“Yeah, but I always got A’s before.”

Rick glanced at Shane with a frown, but Shane didn’t know what they were missing here either.

“When did your mom say this?” Shane asked.

Carl stared down at the silver paper wrapped bread.

“It was my own fault,” he answered quietly. “I didn’t remember to lock my door. I had a comic book in my room, okay? She caught me reading it. I didn’t know what to say. I told her you let me read them. She said that’s why I got a B and that she knew better and that she shouldn’t have let you ruin my life.”

“Carl,” Rick said with a sigh, “your mom is having a hard time right now.”

“It’s my fault,” Carl asserted. “I wanted to go hunting and you two fought and then I got hurt, and now you won’t even talk to each other anymore.”

“No,” Rick contended gently, “nothing is your fault.”

“Yes, it is,” Carl insisted. “I’m ruining everything. Everything I want to do is bad!”

Carl fled the kitchen back into the main room. He huddled sideways on the sofa there with his back to them. Shane looked to Rick and saw the guilt stealing over him like a shadow. Carl didn’t need that darkness now. Shane put his hand on Rick’s shoulder and gave him a knock there to get his attention.

“You drop this attitude, or you let me talk to him.”

Rick stared at him, assessing, then turned to sight Carl and immediately dropped his chin.

“Do it.”

Shane squeezed his shoulder hard, something Rick would feel so he’d know Shane was still there, on Rick’s side, as he walked away from him. Shane sat beside Carl on the sofa and prepared to wait out the boy’s tension. He knew better than to try to comfort him now. Comforting would be akin to conflation with the attacker. As far as Shane was concerned, Carl was welcome to as much discontent as he could stand.

Turned out Carl could stand about fifteen minutes of it, before he leaned the side of his head on the back of the sofa in exhaustion. Seemed to be about all Rick could stand as well; Shane heard the burners click back on as Rick turned his attention back to dinner. Shane could give Carl any number of reasonable explanations for his parents’ change in behavior. 

Sometimes people who loved each other went through hell together for a while. Sometimes people who loved each other hated each other for a while. Sometimes people who loved each other had to stay away from each other for a while. He’d watched the fight in Rick go on for years and years without end, however. Shane didn’t know what it was about, but it was not about love. There was really only one thing he could say at this point. 

“Just ignore her.”

Carl looked up at this unexpected option. Shane raised his brows and nodded. 

“Don’t listen to her.” 

Nothing gave Lori the right to make Carl feel bad about himself. If it’d come to that, if that was why Rick had been avoiding her so much, then there was no pussyfooting around this anymore. Carl needed to preserve his self-esteem, even if it was at the expense of his relationship with his mother.

Shane held Carl’s gaze and watched something firm up inside of him. He knew it was a wall against his own mother, but it had to be done. Carl nodded and Shane gave him an encouraging smile. 

“Now since you are our resident film critic, and we trust you with these things, you want to pick out a movie for us on Netflix?” 

Carl smiled a little now too and took the remote from Shane’s hand.

Rick was pacing in front of Shane, blocking his path from his Jeep to the station. The rookie was watching them with scared eyes from across the lot. No one watching could mistake Rick’s mood for anything but furious. Shane had no intention of backing down—not in this. 

“Carl brought a comic book down to breakfast with him,” Rick bit out quietly. “He explained to his mother that Shane said he didn’t have to listen to her anymore. You know what Lori said?”

Rick had stopped in front of him. Face-to-face, Shane could see what this anger was hiding, as a flicker of brutal fear rolled through Rick’s body.

“What did she say?” Shane asked just as quietly, glancing at the rookie who was slowly stepping nearer.

“You, keep walking,” Rick growled out over his shoulder.

The kid hurried past and into the station. He watched Rick swallow hard. He couldn’t speak for a minute, but all Shane did was wait him out like always. They’d had fights before, even over Carl. Shane had been taught growing up that soft spots were there to be toughened up, but Rick had taught him that patience was a better motivator to Carl than pushing. Shane had held to that rule with Carl, but his patience had found a limit with Lori.

“She said I had a choice: either I stop letting Carl see you, or _she_ was going to disappear with him for hours every night and I could see how _I_ liked it. You don’t know…” Rick couldn’t finish, throat seeming to tighten up all at once.

“I don’t know what?”

“You don’t know what you did.”

“I did what was best for the situation.”

“You don’t even know the situation.”

“Well, what more do I need to know? If Carl is in danger, I will do whatever it takes to keep him safe.”

“You don’t think I can protect my son?”

“That’s not it…Rick.”

Rick had turned from him to rush into the station; doubts that Shane had never seen in Rick flocked around his friend this morning like ravens. As soon as Shane stepped through the station doors, T-Dog fell in step with updates for the day. Sliding back into the well-worn uniform of professionalism, Shane absorbed the chatter from Atlanta—a less-than-perfect arms bust, a grab & go, lots of merchandise looking for a way out of the city.

Inevitably, in these circumstances, someone would get it into their head to try for the coast, which meant they had to cross right through East Hills County. The Sheriff’s Department dealt with Atlanta runoff a couple of times a year, but always at night. Day shift had drilled for this plenty of times though, so Shane ran through procedures in his head to prepare.

By the time lunch rolled around, Shane had had enough time to switch over from considering high-speed chase drills to what the hell happened this morning in the parking lot. He and Rick picked up a bag of fried chicken (complete with wet-nap squares). It felt like an olive branch; Rick usually vetoed it as too messy for the cruiser.

Even with that bag at his feet, as they drove to the roller rink, Shane felt uneasy. From his perspective, he’d made the right call last night with Carl. Clearly, from Rick’s he hadn’t. Rick was seeing something Shane was not, and he had yet to let him in on what that was.

Shane knew the best thing to do in a situation like this was to step back. He did not want to make whatever was going on in the Grimes’ household worse by taking action in ignorance. The part that was making him uneasy was that he couldn’t make himself walk away from this. Rick was more scared than Shane had ever seen him, scared to the point of inaction and silence and hiding out from his own wife in Shane’s apartment. Shane could feel himself about to do the wrong thing, with no way to stop.

“All available units, high-speed pursuit in progress. Weaver County units request local assistance. Highway 18 north.”

The crackle of excited voices on their radio, as they were about to turn into the parking lot, was almost a relief. Weaver County to the west had pursued an Atlanta absconder to the East Hills County line. They were now invited to give chase at 120 miles per hour. Rick swung up to the curb to let Shane hang out the window and dunk their untouched lunch into a city waste bin.

“Suspects are two male Caucasians. Be advised, they have fired on police officers. Proceed with extreme caution.”

As Rick sped north to the highway, Shane got on the radio to call for the other car on the east side to head up with them to set up the road block. He directed a car on the west side to close up the road behind the suspect vehicle.

Rick gunned it when they hit the open country of the northern county limits, the area that had given the word ‘hills’ to the city name. Those hills rolled out ahead of them, scorched brown by the midsummer heat. Lack of residences would give them one less thing to worry about, as they lay the strip of tire spikes across the highway and waited down the road with the other east side patrol.

Shane was glad for the lack of potential collateral damage, when the pursued car rose almost at once over the hill and hit the spikes, shocking them all by flipping and rolling into the grassy field alongside the road. When the piercing noise of crunching metal finally stopped, Shane muttered into the raw silence to revive the shaken men.

“Make sure you got a round in the chamber and your safety off.”

Trying to peek into the overturned wreck for the sight of unlikely survivors, Rick crept forward with his head down. Shane kept behind his cruiser, as did the other deputies behind theirs, guns up and ready to provide cover. When a long-haired and torn-shirted man crawled from the driver’s side window, no one had the chance to call a single order, before the man raised a semiautomatic and opened fire.

Surprise made all of their aims wild, and the gunman had the chance to blast a hole in the window of Shane’s cruiser a few inches from where he was sheltering. Shane looked over to Rick to share the craziness of the close call, but Rick was looking down at his lowered revolver. Oh, Hell, he’d probably jammed and was trying to clear it. Until he could get it cleared, he was standing there defenseless, in a firefight, behind no shelter.

“Rick! Rick!” Shane tried to call him over to the cruiser, but the gunfire drowned him out completely.

The other officers were doing their jobs, laying down suppressing fire. The gunman, however, was not being suppressed. Even taking a hit in the shoulder, the hostile just kept firing. Shane dropped into a crouch like a sprinter at the starting line, laying his shotgun beside his feet. All of his muscles bunched in readiness to spring forward and grab Rick to haul him behind the car.

Shane almost fell on his face on the pavement, when he saw Rick recoil back from impact, arms flailing out, and hitting the ground hard. On hands and feet, Shane lunged out after him, breath in fast pants and a whirring sound in his ear. At a searing burn on the side of his head, Shane flinched, and in that one involuntary blink of his eyes, he came back to himself. 

No blood spray, his mind told him, as he stared at Rick coughing and rolling over in the long grass. The wind was knocked out of him; Rick was hit in the vest. Shane shoved himself backwards, back behind the cover of his vehicle again, back to doing his job. Tremors of relief now hit him, making his aim sloppy, as he eliminated the threat with far more rounds than it should have taken. 

While Shane reloaded his shotgun, a man clambered out of the passenger side with a shotgun of his own. Shane’s aim was steadier this time, as the tunnel vision of anger kicked in. Shane’s shotgun blasts blew the man right off of his feet. He bounced, when he fell. The field went silent. Shane swung his head around, when Rick finally rose, still trying to clear his weapon. Shane stalked toward him. 

“God damn it,” Shane shouted, “I should have made you come to the firing range with me. I shouldn’t have been so fucking soft on you after Carl’s accident.” 

“Shane,” Rick demanded, as he swiveled to stare at him with dilated pupils, “you do not tell Lori this happened, _ever_. You can’t give her an excuse to take—ah!” 

Blood spray. The world stopped, and Shane took out the third gunman with one shot. 

“Rick!” 

Shane dropped his weapon, as he dropped down over his partner. He ripped Rick’s vest away to put direct pressure on the wound to his side and screamed to the deputies to call for an ambulance.

“Tell them officer down!”

He turned his face back toward Rick, at the feel of blood pulsing hot over his fingers. Rick squirmed and gasped beneath his hold. 

“Shh, shh, shh,” Shane hushed him like a baby, like he was holding a newborn Carl again, this tiny little life that was relying on him completely. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” 

Rick grabbed onto his shirt front. 

“I’m right here,” Shane comforted. “Stay with me.” 

The room disallowed distractions. Some medical texts, a few framed fishing lures, and a potted primrose were all a patient’s mind had to play with. The only thing left to focus on was Dr. Dale, the station’s staff psychologist. That was not Shane’s idea of a good time.

After five days of telling the same story, Shane was getting tired. Lying took a lot of energy. He was afraid he was going to slip up. The two other officers involved in the shootings had already been cleared to go back to work. 

Shane didn’t have to guess why he was still being interviewed. The finger hadn’t been pointed at him—his shield-brothers wouldn’t do that—but they also wouldn’t defend him. Defending him would cast blame on Rick, and Rick couldn’t tell his side from a hospital bed under constant sedation.

Dr. Dale had been left with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of pressure to get the answers that newly elected Governor Philip Blake wanted—and the governor wanted someone to blame for a seriously injured sheriff in a moneyed county. Irritatingly, Dale was trying to do the right thing and accurately assess the situation.

“And then what happened?”

“I punched Deputy Leon Basset.”

“I’m not asking for a list of mistakes, Shane. I’m asking what happened.”

“Deputy Basset did his job and restrained me from riding in the ambulance with…the Sheriff.”

“With Rick.”

“I had to go back to the station to surrender my weapon and badge, because I had just killed three people.”

“You’re not upset about killing three people.”

“Nope, and I’m not going to be tomorrow when you ask me that again.”

“It’s only been five days. It can take time for the full realization of your actions to sink in.”

“You think I should be feeling guilty about something? How about breaking position in a firefight, yelling at my partner, and getting him shot?”

“Did you want Rick to be shot?”

“Oh, for God’s sake! He’s my best friend, a man who I love. I would never do anything to hurt him.”

“Yet you want to take responsibility for his injury.”

“It’s coming down on me. When I walked in here today, I got looked at like a murderer. We can’t go after the gangs in Atlanta these guys worked for. There is no one to take this out on but me. I know what’s coming. I’m going to be asked to resign. I’m going to take the fall for this.”

“Take me through it again.”

“We were exchanging fire. Rick got hit in the vest. While he was down, we eliminated the two visible threats. Rick stood back up, and I ran over to him yelling at him to tell me if he was okay or not. He turned toward me. He was shot in the back by the third subject to crawl out of the vehicle.”

“He didn’t have to turn around.”

“Rick didn’t do anything wrong. All he did was order me to get back in position. So can we quit this? I’ll make it real simple for you. I panicked in a firefight. I haven’t stopped panicking. You know where I spend all day? In Rick’s hospital room, in my uniform, so they can’t kick me out. I failed my partner, and I am so scared of doing it again.”

“Rick is not your responsibility. Your responsibility is to this department. I don’t want to pull a good cop off the job, if I don’t have to.”

“Well, PhD, earn your salary and tell me how much I care about that right now.”

“I’ll recommend a week of leave.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

Shane knew he was done. He knew why his fellow officers looked at him the way they did. The rookie must have talked to someone about the fight that he’d witnessed between him and Rick in the parking lot on the morning before Rick was injured. It wouldn’t show up on any report. It would simply be a doubt in their minds that would never leave. 

At least, as Shane walked back out of the station, he was leaving secure that the silence would hold. There would be no whisper of weapon malfunctions or partners’ arguing. Lori would never know what happened that day. He could do that much for Rick.

When he got back to his apartment, he turned the shower on as hot as he could stand. With a wince, Shane pulled off the police ball cap that he’d been wearing all week outside of his home. Next he peeled off the shirt that he’d sweated through at his psych eval from the effort of keeping private all that needed to be kept private. His leave had been approved; he had privacy now.

Shane brought the clippers out from the cabinet under the sink. It took some time to buzz himself down to the scalp. By the end, he stood in a sea of black tufts of hair. The humid air of the steamy room made him sticky and itchy, like he was shedding his skin. Swiping a hand over the fogged mirror, he could see the first split in his old skin now.

It was a jagged, ugly wound. He hadn’t sought medical attention for the damage of the bullet that had scalped him in the firefight. This wound was too intimate to share. It exposed the basest part of him. 

When Rick’s life had been in danger, none of Shane’s training had mattered. All that had mattered in that moment had been Rick. Shane had ceased to be a cop in that moment. He wasn’t sure what he was now. He stared at his face, half-obscured in the hazy air. 

“This is what I am,” he told himself. “No more pretending.” 

The beast stared back, beautiful and terrible.

The investigation had closed today. Lori had filled Hershel in on the findings. Hershel also knew, however, that official reports were written by officials, and politics always got involved. In search of the real story, he waited on a bench in the hospital corridor outside of Rick’s room. 

He knew Shane was in there, but he didn’t want to interrogate the man in front of his son, even though his son was not awake. They kept him sedated to keep him still, to give his shattered ribs and his damaged lung a chance to heal. Rick would heal.

Shane had been helping with that, according to the nurses. They said he calmed Rick, when he grew restless in between doses. From the grateful nurses, Hershel had learned that Shane came every day and stayed until visiting hours began, leaving before the Grimes’ family arrived. 

It was ten minutes until Lori and Carl would show now. Shane was cutting it close. If he was, as Hershel suspected, saying goodbye, even to a man who couldn’t hear him, he could understand the delay. Shane confirmed his suspicions, when he emerged with tears in his eyes, shutting the door gently behind him.

He didn’t look like Hershel remembered. His head was shaved like a new recruit. It reminded Hershel of when Rick had been young, and he’d sheared him like a lamb in the springtime. It reminded him of himself when he’d enlisted in the army, as did the way Shane lifted his chin to him when he saw him. 

“I’m sorry about Rick. I’ve resigned.”

Hershel gestured to the bench seat beside him. Shane sat and stared ahead, awaiting whatever was coming his way. Hershel didn’t have the heart to hit a man when he was down.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked instead.

Shane shook his head with a sad smile.

“Thought I’d buy a little farm.”

“Need to know how to work one first.”

Shane dropped his chin.

“Come stay with me for a couple of weeks and I’ll teach you—in exchange for some labor, of course.”

Shane looked at him, that recruit's blank page before him.

“Thank you.”

“Shane!”

They both looked up to see Carl coming down the corridor at a dead run. Shane dropped off of the bench to crouch down and accept the embrace that thumped into him. Carl’s arms grabbed tightly around his neck.

“Dad’s going to be okay,” Shane reassured.

“You got those guys?” Carl asked against his neck.

“Yeah, I killed _every_ one.”

Hershel was surprised to see Carl relax now in Shane’s arms. Shane turned his head to breathe in the smell of him.

“I love you,” he said into Carl’s hair.

“I love you too.”

Hershel glanced down the hall to see Lori restraining herself from running or yelling. She had nearly caught up, however, and Shane saw her now too.

“Look after your dad for me, okay?”

Carl nodded.

“Good man. Go ahead.”

Shane gave him a little nudge toward Rick’s door, as Lori stopped in front of them.

“Stay away from my son,” she demanded.

“It’s okay,” Shane whispered to Carl and nodded him into the room.

“They told me what happened,” Lori announced, “about the third gunman, about you breaking position. Stay away from my husband. Stay away from my family.”

She followed Carl into the hospital room and shut the door hard enough to make its window shake. Shane seemed to be having trouble catching his breath, standing where he’d held Carl in his arms. Hershel expected to see grief in his eyes, when he looked up. He saw violence. 

Looking at Shane standing beside him, thick-necked and broad-shouldered and wide-wristed, Hershel didn’t know if he’d be teaching this man to run the farm, so much as trying to contain him on it.


	4. Chapter 4

“Rick’s never going to put his weight back on eating spinach salads."

Hershel and his unsolicited advice had joined Lori in the kitchen. The noon sun streamed in and Rick still slept fitfully upstairs. It would take time for him to find his equilibrium again after the sedatives. He’d been waking up sobbing. The last thing she needed was a critique of her meal choices.

“He needs to get back on his routine," Lori stated. "I’ve made this salad at least once a week for him for over a decade.”

“I’ve rehabbed enough injured animals to know—“

“You’re living in the den. You’re changing his bandages. You’ve managed to take over walking Carl to and from school and making _his_ lunches. Would you like me to leave?”

Lori tossed the plastic container of spinach down onto the counter.

“Lori, I’m not asking you to leave.”

“No, just to leave everything to you. I might _as well_ leave.”

“I’m not trying to push you out, but I have a lot of experience with significant injuries. I know once Rick’s through the worst of it, he’ll be happy to have his routines back.”

The pity in his voice was unbearable. He’d had to witness her failure with the nurse who’d tried to teach her the bandage care. She’d had to flee the room, because Rick had become so agitated at her touch that he’d begun to shout at her to get away from him. Hershel had stepped in and Lori had stepped back. 

She had just kept stepping back as the weeks went on. All the way back to the church. She wouldn't go back to _her_ church, well not her parents', not the one she'd been raised to. She even avoided the ones in town where people would know her and pity her for her recent tragedy. 

She drove an hour away, where she could be a nameless penitent and not a Grimes. Here she could pause outside the small stone church on the country road and take the time to notice that the August heat was sweet today. She didn't have to force a smile for anyone; the gravel lot was empty of other cars but the one belonging to the church secretary.

There were bees buzzing in the church memorial garden. The air was heavy and hot and drowsy. Late afternoon was when she usually headed back home to start dinner, but Hershel was there. Hershel was always there. She didn’t know how he could spend so much time away from the farm, but he said he’d taken on a veterinary intern who was looking after things.

Lori sat on a stone bench by some tall red thistles and took a deep breath. She couldn't stand his lack of confidence in her. She had run the household right for fifteen years, even when it was just her alone in that condo all week and Rick exhausted and haunted every weekend. With the fear and the loneliness, at nineteen years old she’d had to make due. 

The things she'd gone through, things Hershel didn’t know about, to live with a cop. Her life was a constant struggle to try to protect her son from her husband's job. She’d been like a wall between him and the world, and she knew that, but the world had not seemed like a good place for Carl to be. Maybe it had made him too soft, but she’d rather that than too hard. 

Rick's injury had changed things. She couldn't protect her son from that; Carl already knew what it felt like to be shot. So, she prayed. Well, she sat. She sat in the pews of the empty sanctuary. She sat in the silence of midday church on the weekdays and pondered the sound of it. Such a contrast to the hours spent with Rick, the constant arguments. Without that noise, there was a massive space opening up inside of her, frightful for being so hollow.

Eventually the salutations in town changed tone, when Rick's return to work date was announced. In place of the sounds of sympathy, soft and sad, now she listened to cheers of congratulation, chummy and cajoling. Everyone knew he’d get back to work so soon, such a strong man, such a capable sheriff. None of it seemed to get through to her, no matter who came up to try to offer their comforts or smiles in the grocery aisle. It all felt like it was happening to someone else.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Lori said, startling herself as Paula set a coffee cup in front of her after lunch at her friend’s home. “Being a cop’s wife.”

“Oh, Lori, I don’t know if I could stand it being married to a sheriff,” Paula replied, sitting back at the kitchen table. “That worry must be awful.” 

“But I can’t be that woman, who leaves her husband after he gets injured. I’d look like a monster.” 

Paula put her hand over Lori’s. 

“Are you ready to leave?” 

Lori knew her friend’s pragmatism. It was not so much a question of her heart as of her ability. She hadn’t worked since high school. She didn’t get along with her parents. Paula didn’t have room to put her up. She hadn't made any plan. She shook her head. 

“Well, you have time to think it over,” Paula counseled. “And while you’re doing that, your husband will be doing his job, and the town will be seeing that everything is okay, and there won’t be any monsters.”

Lori’s eyes teared up. The truth had just burst out of her unplanned, yet Paula hadn’t judged, not even her vanity about her reputation. 

“Thank you,” she said, leaning over for a hug. 

When she pulled back, Paula smiled at her like she still believed that Lori was a good person. If there was anyone she trusted to sit judgment on her, it was Paula, so in good faith, Lori smiled back.

Rick could imagine a snobby county like this one electing a sheriff like Morgan Jones—an attractive yet unassuming-looking black man brought over from Atlanta to step in for him. Well, they might, unless he had to run against Rick who’d now had ‘heroic survivor’ added to his credentials, though that was the last thing he felt like right now. Standing beneath the WELCOME BACK SHERIFF banner in the station, he felt more like an imposter. 

Morgan unpinned the shiny, new, gold star, which he’d been wearing as acting sheriff, and pinned it onto Rick’s shirt to give him his rank back. Rick wondered where his star was: if no one had had the stomach to clean the blood off; if it had been tossed out with the rest of his ruined uniform after the investigation had closed; if this new star was supposed to make him feel better; if it was supposed to make him forget. It wasn’t working. The thought of his and Shane’s stars lying together in a landfill somewhere made him sick.

For the sake of Morgan’s son, who was a really sweet kid, Sheriff Grimes kept his smile polite. About Carl’s age, Duane was still round-faced too, but that softness of childhood also shined in his eyes. Carl’s gaze had hardened this year. He’d watched Rick leave the house this morning with something like a protector’s worry showing in his expression. It was disheartening but also made Rick determined to resume a position of strength in his son’s life. 

He would play nice with this new partner, Jones, and never mention his old one. He would sit at his desk for another two weeks, until he could pass his physical. He would get back out on patrol like nothing had happened. He would spend an hour on the firing range every Saturday. 

He was lucky that, at least, he liked Morgan as much as the rest of the station seemed to, even if he did so only because this man had a son who looked like his father had treasured him and protected him well. Also fortunate was that the affinity seemed mutual. Morgan spoke warmly of Rick’s record on the job and his respect for it, which meant that for the most part he’d stay out of Rick’s way. It really couldn’t have been made easier for him to slide into this new life, to keep his game face on and make it look good, and most importantly to appease Lori.

The latter was getting harder to do by the day. It was bad enough at work, Shane’s twelve years of service to the department completely silenced and gone. To come home and have every phone call he made, every errand he ran, every conversation he had with his son monitored by Lori to make sure they were Shane-less, well, Rick wasn’t sure what could be more demeaning than that. 

“It’s just Hershel,” Rick answered the look Lori gave him from the end of the hallway.

She stepped toward him with her hand out, palm up.

“Daddy, Lori would like to talk to you,” he said with as much neutrality as he could muster.

He thanked God that Carl was up in his room already tonight and didn’t have to witness his father brought this low.

“No, I understand,” Lori said into the receiver. “I know it’s a long drive and meeting halfway makes sense; just tell me exactly where you’re going to be. The McDonald’s at Harvey Square, fine.”

She passed the phone back to him. 

“I expect you home at nine.”

He couldn’t even bring himself to respond. She didn’t care, walking back out of the hallway again like she had no doubt of his obedience.

“I’m not meeting you at any McDonald’s,” Hershel said as soon as Rick put the phone back to his ear.

Rick hadn’t expected him to, not the man who’d raised him, who had fed him food he’d grown himself or lacking that from his own neighbors’ fields. Hershel named a bar outside the city and told him he’d be waiting. He didn’t tell Rick what he wanted to meet him about.

From a lifelong healer like Hershel, it could just be a health check. Rick fuzzily remembered Hershel’s stay at the house, when he’d first come back from the hospital. Daddy, and not Lori, had changed Rick’s bandages for him, till he’d regained enough coordination to do it himself. Rick might remember yelling at Lori to leave him alone, when she’d tried it.

Stepping through the door into the dimly lit tavern, Rick spotted his father seated at the bar and headed toward him. He was surprised by how much he simply wanted someone to talk with. As Rick took a seat, the bartender set a glass of seltzer in front of him. His father wouldn’t order anything else these days. Hershel only ever came to a bar now, when he was feeling guilty about something and needed a reminder of what it looked like when a man refused to change.

“Do you know why I encouraged your marriage to Lori?”

Rick sighed. It was like Daddy had zero ability to make small talk. To be honest, he had wondered, though. Hershel had always promoted thoughtful decision-making and small steps toward big commitments. He’d damn near forced that slow way of life on Rick, working him to exhaustion on the farm every night, when he was a teenager, to keep him out of trouble.

“I assume you were worried about me for some reason, like you always were.”

Hershel turned to him now and Rick could tell he must have hit on the nose with that one.

“You’re right. It was for selfish reasons. You know I never liked your involvement with the police force. I thought that having a family at home would give you something to keep yourself safe for.”

Though Rick had suspected as much, he’d never thought he’d hear it out loud.

“I’m sorry.”

He’d expected that even less.

“I don’t understand,” Rick responded.

He watched Hershel play his fingers over the edge of the napkin his glass sat on. Daddy hardly ever showed nervousness. Watching his father rubbing at the arch of bone between nose and brow started to raise Rick’s own anxiety.

“I think I got some things mixed up,” Hershel said. “I think my prejudice against the job might have blinded me to some truths I would have benefited from seeing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I identified Shane too much with his profession. I…have had the opportunity lately to remember who Shane is outside of the job.”

Hershel would have heard about the resignation amid all the bluster from the governor. It wasn’t surprising that he would have thought some about it, considering that Shane had accepted culpability in Rick’s injury. Hershel didn’t seem to be saying he held the injury against Shane, however. He seemed to be saying he was _letting go_ of things he’d held against him, which Rick would have found much better news had he any idea of where Shane even was. It was like being told a bad joke, but Rick decided to just do what he’d been doing all month and play along.

“So what brought on this change of heart?” he asked sorely.

Hershel smiled a little now and Rick stared at that smile. It wasn’t the one he usually saw his father give to help allay the worries of an owner of a sick animal, the one he used to show his confidence and his care. This one looked fragile and mournful and real, and Rick felt he maybe shouldn’t look. He looked anyway, because it was the first loving thing he’d seen in weeks.

“I remembered the day you picked Shane to be your best friend,” Hershel began:

“It was Field Day at the elementary school, and Shane beat you in every single foot race. You were first and second every time, and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t catch him. 

“I could see you staring at him all the rest of the day; through the pie eating contest and the horseshoe toss and the awarding of the ribbons. When the parents started to take their kids home, you grabbed my hand and asked me to wait a minute. I watched you screw up all your courage and go over to Shane and stop him by his dad.

“I followed you over to see what you were doing. I heard you say to him, ‘You’re really fast,’ and Shane said, ‘You’re really fast too.’ And, you got this look on your face like you couldn’t believe he would praise you for second best. So, when you started to ask to go to Shane’s house every day, I could say ‘yes’ to you. I knew I could let you spend your summers with him and that I wouldn’t have to worry about you, because he was kind.”

 _Oh, Daddy_ , Rick thought. 

Hershel was trying so hard. He didn’t just come out and say to Rick that Lori has not been kind. He tried to walk with him to that knowledge. He wanted to stand beside Rick, but Rick wasn’t standing. He didn’t think he’d been on his feet since he was eighteen years old. That was the year he’d boarded that Ferris wheel with Lori, and she’d sold him on her childish ideal of “a perfect family.” 

“I keep hoping you’re going to talk to me,” Hershel admitted. “I care about you, Rick, and maybe I do it wrong, but I’d like a chance to correct it.”

“There’s nothing you can do.” 

Rick rose to leave. There was nothing to say either. He certainly couldn’t talk about Lori’s most closely guarded sin. She would never forgive. He stepped back out into the night with a glance at his watch. He’d make it back on time. He’d make it right.

“The schools are so much better here,” Morgan said from the driver’s seat of the cruiser. “That’s why she agreed I should take Duane for the school year and she would have him for the summer, but I know we won’t still be separated by next summer.”

Rick didn’t have to reply. He’d found out this week that once Deputy Jones got started on his wife, he wouldn’t quit.

“I’ve got to get her out of that little apartment in the city. I know I can build a better life for her here, something worthy of her.”

He’d showed off the photos already. Jenny Jones had a stage actress’s smile, wide and bright and welcoming. She didn’t look like a cop’s wife; she didn’t look burdened that way. Rick wondered if the separation had been Morgan’s idea, brought about because the man had thought he could do better for her.

“I’d been pushing hard for promotion back home, catching some notice; then this job came up. It was like destiny. Not that you getting shot was like destiny. Sorry, that came out wrong. Geez, Rick, I didn’t mean it like that.” 

Rick shook his head and assured, “If something good came out of it, I won’t complain.”

“I will do my best for this district,” Morgan said solemnly. “You have my word. You and me, we’ll make this city shine.” 

“It’s a pretty low maintenance city.”

“We’ll find something to keep us busy,” he said with a smile that dropped to determination, as he spotted what they’d been waiting to see on this corner. “Something like _that_.” 

Rick and Shane had consistently cleared the dealers out of this neighborhood once a week. That was all it took to prevent the operation from expanding. Morgan strode out of the car with intent and managed to catch two of four by himself, one in each hand. Rick came away empty-handed but smirked at Morgan just the same. 

“City cops,” Rick jibed, patting one suspect down.

They only came up with about a gram. Checking their wallets showed Rick that the two young men did not reside in his county. As usual, they’d just grabbed a couple of small-time, rural cookers. 

“We’ll just fine them for possession and send them back home,” Rick said to Morgan, standing outside the cruiser with the two detainees stowed securely inside. 

That’s what he and Shane had usually done. It kept felony numbers low on the books and yet knocked these guys back enough to keep them off balance. Morgan had followed his lead but clearly was not satisfied. Back at the station, Rick heard him contacting the Washburn County Police Department. A low-pop county that had been labeled ‘sleepy’ in his head, Rick hadn’t had much to do with them.

“They know exactly where the lab is,” Morgan reported to him, “but it’s in a residential pocket, so a raid would be a little more complicated by that. They’re all for a joint operation to take it out. It would make them look good in next year’s municipal review and boost their budget.”

Jones smiled at him like this was all business as usual. Sheriff Grimes didn’t do business like that. He knew it was his job to keep up positive relationships with his neighboring counties, but as far as he’d been concerned Washburn had been low priority. Morgan seemed to read it on him easily. 

“You can never have too many friends in this line of work. You never know when you’re going to need a favor.”

“This is not my area of expertise,” Rick admitted. “I’d need to bring in help.”

“I’ve already been brought in,” Morgan reminded. “I can take lead on this one.”

It seemed more like a career move than a law enforcement strategy, but Rick knew that Morgan would have to make a name for himself the hard way as he was not a hometown hero like Rick. He didn’t want to deny the man a chance to earn a permanent promotion.

“You feel confident about this?” Rick pressed.

“Let me show you some more city cop tricks.”

Rick shook his head with amusement. 

“You’re lead.”

“What we have here in East Hills is something special,” Morgan told his chosen deputies, after a week of intensive prepping for the nighttime op. “This is a city that could actually be safe. After twenty years working in Atlanta, that is something I never thought I’d see in my life.”

Rick could understand the temptation to view East Hills as a utopia. For the first two years out of the academy, rookie Officer Grimes had worked in Atlanta. Shy and country and soft, he’d been sat next to a veteran patrolling the country club estates up north. The city beat had still shocked him, as he’d learned exactly what an officer had to do every day to keep a neighborhood safe.

It hadn’t occurred to Rick until now, that coming _out_ of the city could prove just as shocking. As he drove home for dinner between the end of regular shift and the start of the op, Rick started to worry. No matter how many ways Rick had tried to tell Morgan that he could slow down here, Morgan had not slowed down. Rick felt himself lagging behind.

Rick tried to eat quickly, for several reasons: he had to be on the road in twenty minutes; he didn’t like salad which was all he’d been given for dinner tonight; and Lori had forbade him talking about the op which left a very tense reticence at the table. She didn’t want him to scare Carl, but Carl looked scared anyway. His son picked at his spinach and not even to pick out the pieces of chicken to eat first like he usually did. 

Carl would be hungry later. He looked hungry now, like he’d lost weight. Rick would have chalked it up to the natural thinning out of adolescence had he not seen Duane again yesterday. Duane had looked healthier than his son, stronger too like nothing could tire him. Carl moved like his limbs felt heavy.

Taking his last bite of raw spinach, Rick realized that even if Carl did finish his salad, he’d still be hungry tonight. With painful clarity, Rick understood that the stash of high-calorie foods they’d kept at Shane’s apartment hadn’t been treats; they’d been survival. Carl was not thriving on Lori’s diet of egg white omelets, carrot sticks & raisins, turkey wraps, salads with vinaigrette, and nonfat yogurt.

“How about I pick us all up a pint of ice cream on my way back?” Rick offered with a forced mildness to Lori seated across the table.

“We’re going to have a hard enough time, Rick,” she admonished, “without you making Carl sick by feeding him ice cream in the middle of the night.”

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, pushing away from the table and stepping around the corner into the front hall.

Leaning on the wall by the entrance table, Rick tried not to lose it. All he had to do was to think of some reasonable argument for feeding his son, and he couldn’t. He’d been struggling all week to keep up with Morgan and his strategizing for the raid, and he was burnt out. He couldn’t think of the right thing to say to Lori to persuade her. He couldn’t even think of a good lie to tell her or a successful way to hide food for Carl somewhere. 

“What are you doing?” Lori asked from the dining room doorway.

She had made him promise to come home for a family dinner, so that Carl would feel like this was a normal work night. She wanted him to pretend like everything was fine. She wanted him to sit there and smile, while he watched his son go hungry, lacking for nourishment and for comfort. She didn’t want him to father Carl at all.

“Nothing,” Rick answered, as he left, “I’m doing nothing.”

Rick swiped at his face, when his cell vibrated in his pocket, as though the caller could see him when he answered. Morgan’s number showed, and Rick cleared his throat before taking the call.

“Yeah?”

That hadn’t sounded good. He could hear the tightness and wetness of a man who’d tried to stop himself from crying to no success.

“Rick, where are you?”

Glancing at his watch, he saw that he was now ten minutes late to the equipment check. Their team should have been on the road about now. He leaned his forehead onto the steering wheel and took a deep breath. He wanted to say that he was on his way in to the station, but he couldn’t.

“I’m sitting in my truck in the parking lot.”

Even with Morgan’s hand muffling the phone, he could hear him call out to the other deputies.

“Triple check. I will be back in a minute.”

Rick didn’t bother to try to compose himself or hide what he’d been doing. He just unlocked the passenger-side door and waved Morgan in when he appeared at his window. Morgan stepped up into the seat and leaned back quietly. Rick could feel the thrum of assertive energy from the man, the preparedness for tonight’s action. Even so, Jones waited patiently for Grimes to begin this conversation.

“I had a disagreement with Lori tonight about Carl having ice cream after dinner.”

He was afraid he sounded as crazy as he felt right now. Morgan settled a bit beside him, and Rick felt himself relax some now too, as that little offering of honesty was accepted by his partner. Still aware of his other responsibilities, Jones checked his watch. Rick knew he was holding the whole operation up, but his game face was gone. He turned toward Morgan to let him see.

“I’m sorry.”

After a quick study of Rick’s eyes, Morgan slumped back in his seat. 

“It’s alright. Duane’ll be happy to have me home early.”

“You’re not going to Washburn tonight?”

“Nah, no rush, right? Like you keep telling me?” Morgan replied with a little smile. “I’ll just tell Washburn P.D. we’re missing some paperwork. It happens.”

“It’ll piss ‘em off.”

“I’ll send Sgt. Ford a box of steaks.”

“Cigars,” Rick advised. “He likes cigars. One time Shane and I…”

In the silence, inadvertently created, Rick heard Morgan take a deep breath.

“I have a view of Shane’s grandfather’s plaque from my desk,” Morgan told him. “I had wondered for a while when I first got here, if Walsh’s record was as good as it read or if he’d been gold-starred because of his name. When I met you, I figured out pretty quickly that you wouldn’t have stood for a less than worthy partner. You’ve got high standards, and the team looks up to you because of that. I’ve tried to meet those standards, but it’s been a hell of a month.”

Rick laughed a little.

“I thought I was dragging behind _you_.”

Morgan laughed too. 

“Yeah, that’s why you never put two perfectionists together.”

Rick smiled at him.

“Shane had to remind me constantly to ease off.”

“Sounds like a good guy to have around.” 

“Yeah, and he’s always been around. We’ve been best friends since we were little. He’s been like my brother.”

“That change?”

“I have no idea,” Rick admitted. “I can’t talk to him. I can’t even try. If Lori found out…”

Rick shook his head, tingle of embarrassment in his cheeks. He could feel Morgan frowning at him but couldn’t bring himself to turn his way again. He tried for a vague explanation.

“She’s a perfectionist too, but not the kind who enjoys being reminded to ease up.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told. I hate to say it, but she’s got that reputation around the station. I was told not to invite her to your welcome back celebration, so I didn’t.”

Rick was shocked silent. He felt that kneejerk reaction to defend her but stopped himself. His deputies were right anyway. Rick didn’t think he could have gotten through that first day back with the added stress of Lori beside him. It was humbling that they’d done what they could to protect him. 

“Hey, she won’t be checking _my_ phone bill,” Morgan offered perceptively, holding out his cell.

Rick held the little black phone in both hands, as Morgan exited the truck. It was warm from his body heat and it felt like the warmth of his generosity was seeping into him. Despite Rick completely fouling up Jones’ plan tonight, the man had treated him with respect. Morgan may be a perfectionist, but his priorities were humanistic. Those were the kind of high standards that Rick would be proud to meet, and Carl deserved a father who could feel proud of himself.

Rick took a couple of deep breaths. His hands were a little shaky. Fear of defying Lori still had a hold on him. He knew once he started, there would be no going back. Rain began to patter against the windshield. The sound was soothing. He felt ready. Rick dialed Shane's cell number and held the phone to his ear. A voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Daddy?"

"Rick?"

"Why are you answering Shane's phone?"

"He doesn't take it with him when he goes outside for chores."

"He's working on the farm?"

"Geez, Rick, what did you think I was trying to tell you at the bar?"

"Why didn't you just tell me?!"

"Because he asked me not to."

"Why?"

"I think he's trying to not kill your wife."

"...well, that's a good reason."

"I know you wouldn't be calling unless you were in some kind of trouble, Rick, so now would be a great time to finally talk to me."

"It's about Carl."


	5. Chapter 5

Hershel was Carl's shotgun today. His learner's permit made Shane and Dad nervous as heck, but Granddaddy didn't mind. They had taken to going on adventures together, the two of them. The trunk held camping gear for an overnight trip in the national park up north. 

It was a foraging trip to get some samples of medicinal herbs for a school project. Dad was paying top dollar for a private school for him, one with a welcoming policy for two dads. It had taken him a while to get used to—the school, well both, but mostly the school. He would have gotten used to two dads a lot easier, if they hadn't tried to hide it from him in the beginning.

When they'd moved to the farm, Rick had spent the first month sleeping on Carl's bedroom floor. It wasn’t until the divorce papers came that he stopped. Carl found them clinging to each other and crying in the living room. They let him read every page clutched in Shane’s hand. 

Surrendered full custody to Rick Grimes. Requesting half of estate paid from liquid assets equal to total assets including properties. Carl looked at the return address of the envelope, a lawyer in Florida. 

Rick slept on the coach downstairs that night, and Carl finally had room to think, to work it all out. He realized Dad had been guarding him at night, so no one could come and take him. No one could take him now, legally, and Lori wasn’t going to try. She didn’t want the house. She wasn’t coming back. She hadn’t even included a note to Carl. She had nothing to say to him. 

He didn’t know what to think about it. He didn’t seem to have any thoughts about it. It was like this space, this gap, but not a painful one. One he’d been waiting for, like a way to escape. A way out. Like freedom. 

Maybe that’s what Rick had meant about not being happy being wife and husband, when he'd been explaining why they were moving out. Maybe they’d all felt that way. Trapped. It seemed really sad, and he spent quite a few nights crying about it when everyone had gone to bed. 

And, Rick was going to bed now, not the couch. He’d only been down there a couple weeks, before he started to sleep upstairs again, this time in the guest room with Shane. Hershel didn’t seem surprised by it, so Carl tried to treat it with nonchalance; but he had to admit, he was a little confused. 

Not about them being close, ever since he could remember they’d been close, but maybe that was the confusing part. He wasn’t quite sure what close meant these days. They didn’t act any differently, but God did life seem different than it was. It was quieter, it was calmer, it was nights spent sitting in the hay loft with a graphic novel and a battery lantern and a crescent moon to keep him company, the rolling fields of Hershel's—of their—farm unfurled below him.

He'd used to hide there when he was a kid and read his dad’s old comic books from Granddaddy's attic. Those were some of his favorite memories from growing up; just him and a couple apples and the old barn cat and the hot, dry air of the hay loft to bask in, while he felt as brave as the man who swung from building to building above a city or flew past the clouds into the coldness of space. To have that chance every night now, he didn't think anything could be better than this.

He wanted to finally relax, he wanted to feel good about how his life was now. But, he had no idea how, and no one else was acting that way to show him how, and he was starting to feel guilty for wanting to. Each one of them had taken a turn at the it’s not your fault talks, but Carl hadn't known what he say. He didn’t know how to tell them he wasn’t feeling guilty about Lori leaving. He was feeling guilty that he was glad she was gone. 

"Why don’t you guys act any different?" Carl asked, staring down at his rubber work boots in the clear early morning light.

"You’ve been through a lot," Rick responded after a quiet pause, as they carried the feed bucket to the chicken coop. "We want to make things as easy for you as we can."

Carl felt himself tearing up and turned away angrily to wipe his eyes. 

"Carl?" Rick queried, setting the bucket down now. 

"I don’t want things to be like they were," Carl answered, clenching his fists. "It scares me," he admitted, hating how small his voice had gotten. 

He'd tried to stay strong, but it had to be one or the other. Either things were the same or they were different. Living halfway had made him feel crazy. 

"I just want to know what’s going on."

He’d meant it as a rhetorical. Just a statement of fact. He didn’t expect his father to start talking. He knew Rick struggled with emotional conversations. Carl usually went to Shane or Hershel because of it, but he wasn’t sure how to bring this up to either of them. 

"Shane and I have been a lot of things to each other over the years," Rick said quietly. "We’ve been classmates, best friends, brothers, partners, parents."

The last was said quietly, as though even Rick was still finding it hard to believe. Carl turned back around, curious. He’d never had someone in his life like that. Rick looked at him and gave him a little smile. Carl smiled back, thinking of comic book heroes and how sometimes there would be someone who always went with them, someone they would call on, someone who knew who they were and who could be trusted. 

They would be drawn side by side, moving forward together. He hadn’t thought it was any more real than men flying, but he could see it now. Sometimes those characters even became lovers. And that’s what was missing, those panels of the story where there should have been a kiss or a loving word were blacked out. Carl swallowed hard, not sure how to say that. Rick didn’t seem to know how to say it either, looking uncomfortably at the ground. 

"Thank you for trying to make things easier for me," Carl said, knowing that when all else fails to fall back on politeness. "And I hope you guys are happy now, but I don’t know if you are, because you don’t show me that you are."

Rick pulled him in for a hug and rubbed firm circles between his shoulder blades with the flat of his hand. Carl closed his eyes and took the comfort. This might have been the most awkward conversation of his life. 

"You’re right," thankfully was all Rick replied.

It was Shane who started it. Rick must have passed on his conversation with Carl, and thank God he did, because Carl didn’t think he could ever repeat any of that again in his life. Shane started to show no hesitation whatsoever in running his hands through Dad’s hair or stroking into the beard he was growing out or kissing him on the mouth whether they were at home or out in public. 

Carl had never seen his father touched so much, and even Rick seemed a little startled at first. He didn't seem to mind though; he would close his eyes during the affection and when he opened them after he would always look relaxed. His reciprocation was to once in a while reach for Shane’s hand to hold. As Carl already knew, his father was more reserved, at least more than Shane. 

Eventually Carl noticed that Shane, it seemed, liked to kiss Rick on the mouth anytime they went somewhere new. To the point that when he didn’t, Carl could make a joke about it. They’d been out walking and stopped in a coffee shop to get something cold to drink. They were standing in line waiting, as some other folks had had the same idea.

"You haven’t kissed him here yet," Carl whispered too low for Rick to hear. 

He watched Shane try to repress his laughter. 

"Rick, do you want a kiss?" was all Shane said to Rick’s quizzical look. 

"Alright."

Shane gave him one as sweetly as ever and then scanned the room with the same challenging look he always used afterwards. Carl felt his own shoulders pull back, as he stood a little taller. He found he kind of liked feeling a bit tough.

The kids at school seemed to notice too. They’d been polite enough, though had mostly given him space. He’d shown up a little beaten down after the divorce and not at all used to ‘progressive self-directed education.' But as soon as he had raised his chin up, he had an admirer. Patrick was a head taller than him, but still seemed to look up to him. He liked to make sure Carl knew he had some developmental delays, but he seemed normal enough, if a little obsessed with LEGO.

They liked a lot of the same things though and could get along just spending hours in Carl’s room watching old Adam West Batman episodes on Carl’s laptop and laughing like fools. Dad seemed relieved that he’d made a friend, so did Patrick’s parents though, so it was another thing he and Patrick could commiserate about. 

His parents were very nice and kind of reserved like Dad and came over to the farm for dinner some weekends. They didn’t make he and Patrick eat at the table with them and didn’t mind that they stayed out past dark to see the rabbits that came out to graze in the back field at sundown. In fact, they seemed a little proud.

Dad had tried to act proud when Carl got his learner’s permit, but it hadn’t completely covered the worry. Carl wasn't worried today, as he drove the long forested road into the mountains with Granddaddy. He'd stopped worrying about his dad this year. He thought it had stopped after the big barbecue at the farm to celebrate the high-end client that the private security company Dad worked for had landed. Some eco-friendly housing development that a senator spent her holidays in. 

Anyway, he'd met Dad's bosses, both ex-military and tough like Shane was tough, the Williams siblings. And Dad was kind of their secretary and kind of their glad-hander and kind of their guy with connections from his time in the sheriff's office. And none of it required a gun. 

The new sheriff, Morgan, had been there too. He'd been referring clients to them, just as Rick had endorsed him in the election. He'd brought his son who was sweet, and they came back to visit some weekends. Duane, as a city kid, was fascinated with all things farm, and to be honest the novelty hadn’t completely worn off for Carl either. He liked to show off how everything ran and the additions he’d made from his studies at school. 

He might be following a healer's path like Hershel. That was why they were out in the woods today, cutting some elderberries. Carl was screwing the lid closed on the collection jar, when he heard it. The noise was like soft, slow footsteps, and it was coming from all round. As soon as he looked up, he tugged at Hershel's sleeve. 

"Get low," he begged, knowing it was hunting season. 

"No hunters allowed in this park, remember?" Hershel whispered.

Little by little Carl untensed and just stared in open wonder. He smiled watching the elk herd pulling leaves off the underbrush with agile mouths. The bull elk was keeping an eye on them, well a nose, as he kept lifting up to sniff the air. His ten feet of antlers seemed to fill the whole forest.

When they got home, Carl didn't even bother to close the car door behind him, as he raced up the porch steps and burst into the house. 

"We saw an entire herd of elk," he exclaimed, when he spotted Rick and Shane in the dining room. "The bull's antlers were huge. I don't even know how he moved his head. They looked so heavy. He must have been really strong. He was so beautiful."

He was distracted from his rambling by Hershel sidling around him in the doorway to whisper to Rick. Carl thought he heard him say, 'he's ready.' He was about to ask what it meant, when he caught tears in his father's eyes.

"Dad, what's the matter?"

"I'm just glad you're safe."

Carl ran up to his room and shut the door and dropped down to the floor and curled into a ball. He tried to hold still in the hopes the world would stop falling out from under him. He heard feet on the stairs. 

"No, Rick, no."

Shane’s voice carried through his closed door, followed by Rick’s.

"We can’t just leave him alone."

"He’s going to be feeling alone whether we’re in the house or not," Shane said. "And scared. Having people around, who he just found out have been hiding a major secret from him for a long time, isn’t going to make him feel a whole lot safer either. So let’s do what we planned and take a nice long walk around the property lines and give him some space. Hershel will be around."

He heard them descend again and then the creak of the screen door. They were probably hoping in their leaving that he wouldn’t feel the need to run. Embarrassingly it worked. It helped to have them gone. He was glad they couldn’t hear him sob himself to sleep in the middle of the afternoon.

He woke on the floor of the bedroom, uncertain of who he was or who he could trust. He heard someone snoring. In the dim of dusk he saw Hershel had fallen asleep on his bed. Carl crept through the darkened house but found it empty. A gift of chocolate pudding sat on the kitchen table. He was sure the massive tin can was Shane's idea. It startled an honest pop of laughter out of him. 

It echoed in the silence and filled him with a deep need to see them. He snatched up Hershel's birdwatching binoculars hanging by the front door and rushed back up to his room, which had the widest view from the window. He saw the full moon first, steaming a hole through the humid July sky.

The misty air cast a deep, sheltering blue over the world, like how the night scenes were painted in his comic books, when the hero would remove his costume to show the man beneath. He saw them step out of the treeline. There was one more field left between them and the house, but they’d stalled, arguing on the crest of the hill. 

Rick had his back turned to Shane, but both were gesturing broadly. Finally Rick turned around and walked toward Shane with slow steps. When he was within reach, Shane grabbed him. He dragged him down to the ground, but Rick was obviously amenable, kissing him like he'd been waiting for this. 

They pulled at each other’s clothing, passionate like Carl had never seen. And he thought it was probably about him. All that love Rick had felt as his father, that he was worried he’d never be able to show again, Shane was sharing it with him.

They were speaking through it all. Carl could almost hear them, as he had one Friday night, up late and returning to his room from the bathroom, pausing at Shane’s voice from their bedroom door:

_"God, you’re so beautiful. You are such a beautiful man."_

His father’s reply a low, unrestrained sound Carl had never heard from him before. He’d had to clap both hands over his mouth to stop from laughing. Half from nerves at the unfamiliarity and half from a strange joy that had made his steps fall light and quick back to his room. 

Carl felt it again, turning from the window to bound back down the stairs. The lamp cast a circle of brightness in the front room. He sat under it and saw the light glow golden on his skin.


End file.
